Pam Grier as Jackie Brown in Jackie Brown (1997)
(Note that this shot is a mirror image in the film, so I flipped to reflect how Jackie actually looked in this scene.)

Vitals

Pam Grier as Jackie Brown, flight attendant and money courier

Los Angeles, Summer 1995

Film: Jackie Brown
Release Date: December 25, 1997
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Costume Designer: Mary Claire Hannan

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today marks a BAMF Style first, focusing on a badass woman from the movies: Pam Grier as the eponymous lead in Jackie Brown, adapted by Quentin Tarantino from Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch. QT had long been a fan of Grier—and rightly so!—including a reference to her in his debut feature, Reservoir Dogs (1992). He had hoped to secure a role for her in Pulp Fiction (1994) until he realized that the actress’ strong presence would make it difficult for audiences to accept Eric Stoltz yelling at her on screen.

After Tarantino and Roger Avary acquired the film rights to three of Elmore Leonard’s novels, the director reportedly “fell in love” with Rum Punch, selecting that as his next feature. In the hopes of hiring Grier for the lead, he changed the character from the white Jackie Burke to the black Jackie Brown, her new surname alluding to Pam Grier’s famous role in Foxy Brown (1974). This character modification wasn’t Tarantino’s only homage to Grier’s career, as the soundtrack also included pieces from Roy Ayers’ original score for Coffy, the blaxploitation classic that provided Grier with her star-making role upon its release 47 years ago on May 13, 1973.

Tarantino had been nervous about how Leonard would react to the changes in his adapted screenplay, but the author not only regarded Jackie Brown to be the finest of the 26 adaptations of his works but also possibly the greatest screenplay he had ever read.

The plot remains essentially the same as the novel, with the action shifted from south Florida to southern California, as 44-year-old flight attendant Jackie is picked up as part of an ATF operation led by agent Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) and local detective Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) to entrap gun-running kingpin Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), for whom Jackie had been running cash from Mexico to make ends meet for herself. With the help of lovestruck bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), Jackie devises a plan that could potentially get the feds off her back, get the dangerous Ordell out of the picture, and yield a half-million dollar payday for herself.

Co-star Robert Forster was fairly nominated with the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but Grier’s performance earned her nominations from the Awards Circuit Community Awards, Chicago Film Critics Association, Golden Globe Awards, Saturn Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

More than 20 years after its release, the film remains a shining gem in Tarantino’s canon, the one from his oeuvre most likely to appeal to audiences who aren’t particularly fans of his other work without alienating those who are. To read more about this excellent movie, I recommend these tributes from BFI and /Film.

What’d He Wear?

I chose Pam Grier’s black suit from the climactic finale of Jackie Brown due to its adjacency to menswear; though I’ve been writing BAMF Style for eight years, women’s fashion in general is still beyond what I’d consider my general métier.

The black suit and white shirt is the female equivalent of Tarantino’s “uniform” developed in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, only missing the black tie worn by Jackie’s male counterparts in those earlier films. Even the lethargic Melanie (Bridget Fonda) is impressed, not only commenting to Louis Gara (Robert de Niro) that it’s “a nice outfit on her” but also reassuring Jackie herself that it “looks really good on you.”

Jackie picks out the $267 suit from the Jones New York section of the fictional Billingsley department store (which was, in fact, the actual Macy’s in the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance), though I’m not sure if the actual suit was made by Jones New York. In chapter 20 of Rum Punch, Jackie refers to the black silk suit as “an Isani I’ve had my eye on,” referring to the short-lived fashion house founded by Jun and Soyon Kim in 1988 that closed its operations in the 1990s not long after the novel was published in 1992.

Though rebranded as “Billingsley”, the department store where Jackie buys her famous suit is clearly a Macy’s, specifically the Jones New York section of the Del Amo Fashion Center mall location.

Jackie’s ventless suit jacket is single-breasted with notch lapels that roll to a single-button closure. Like most women’s clothing, the jacket buttons right-over-left in a tradition cited to date back to centuries ago when middle- and upper-class women were typically dressed by their servants. Due to right-hand dominance at the time, clothiers found it was more efficient to “reverse” the traditional button direction. (You can learn more from Benjamin Radford’s 2010 Live Science article.)

Women’s suits tend to offer more variety in cuts and styles than menswear, but Jackie’s suit jacket—aside from the button placement and the female-oriented silhouette—follows the stylistic pattern that has been standard in menswear for the better part of the 20th century. While still proportionally shorter than most men’s suit jackets, Jackie’s suit jacket appears to be longer than many women’s suit jackets with a fuller skirt that covers the seat. The silhouette is flatteringly fitted to Pam Grier’s physique, a lucky draw for an off-the-rack women’s suit.

The jacket has a breast pocket with a wide welt and flapped hip pockets. The shoulders are padded but not to the dramatic extent of the fashionable power pantsuits of the previous decade, and each sleeve is finished with three functioning buttons on the cuff. These buttons and the single button on the front are flat black plastic with four sew-through holes.

“Wow, you look really cool!” observes Amy the saleswoman, no doubt trying to make a sale but also impressed by Jackie’s appearance. “Looks cool on me, too,” Jackie responds. Amy adds: “I mean, you wear that suit to a business meeting, and you’ll be the badass in the room.”

Although Jackie may appear to be wearing the same white cotton button-up shirt from her flight attendant’s uniform, this shirt can be seen discarded with the rest of the uniform in her dressing room and, instead, she wears the white slubbed blouse that was displayed with the mannequin, wearing the very long point collar flat atop the jacket lapels.  The major differences between this and her uniform shirt is that the non-slubbed white uniform shirt appears to have a slightly narrower point collar and a breast pocket on the left side.

Following the traditional right-over-left buttoning direction for women’s clothing, the shirt has four buttons up the plain front—with no button at the neck. Shaped with reinforced front darts, the shirt has a straight hem looks good when worn untucked with her suit.

Note the shirt’s subtle slubbing and the reinforced darts that rise above the bust to a barely detectable horizontal inside-facing yoke.

Rather than the full, sand-washed silk skirt of Jackie Burke’s suit in Rum Punch, Grier’s Jackie picks out a suit with trousers, fitted around the hips and fuller through the leg down to flared bottoms.

Between Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen) attempting to pull off the Raylan Givens cowboy cop look before it was cool and Ray Nicolette’s ill-advised velcro sandals and socks that neutralize an otherwise-cool leather jacket, Jackie Brown is inarguably the best-dressed person in the room.

Jackie wears the same plain black leather pumps with thick heels that were authorized with her uniform. The uniform called for thin black stockings, though I can’t tell if she removed them when she put on her suit pants.

Jackie’s black pumps get prominent screen time during an earlier scene opposite Sharonda in the Del Amo food court, with a guest appearance from the shopping bag that serves as Jackie’s only viable competition for Ray Nicolette’s affections.

“I decided to wear this suit instead of my tired old uniform,” Jackie had explained to the clerk at Billingsley, referring to the bright royal blue two-piece uniform she wears as a flight attendant for the fictional Cabo Air, which Detective Mark Dargus describes as “the shittiest little shuttle-fuckin’ piece-of-shit Mexican airline there is.”

The uniform consists of an above-the-knee tube skirt and a matching hip-length collarless suit jacket with padded shoulders, cinched with four sets of forward-facing pleats at the waist where it fastens right-over-left through a hidden closure rather than a visible button. She wears her gold “JACKIE BROWN” name badge on the right and the gold Cabo Air wings badge pinned to the left side. The upper arm of the left sleeve is decorated with another Cabo Air badge, a coral red sunburst with a yellow border and a white “C.A.” embroidered in the center.

In addition to her usual white shirt and black pumps, the outfit is completed with a striped orange neckerchief knotted on the left side of her neck.

Jackie enters the mall in her Cabo Air uniform.

Jackie’s earrings are small gold mini-hoops with a single silver pearl dangling from each, worn in her lobes.

Jackie wears a black PVD-coated steel wristwatch with gold hands and gold crown on a slim black calfskin leather strap with matching top-stitching. The small gold dot at the 12:00 position on the watch’s minimalist black dial otherwise absent of hour markers suggests Movado, whose iconic “museum dial” was pioneered by Nathan George Horwitt in 1947 to symbolize the sun at high noon.

In custody but hardly out of time.

While no current model in the Movado women’s lineup matches Jackie’s timepiece, the brand does offer a gold-coated Museum Classic with a similar dial and strap (via Amazon and Movado). There are a few black-finished men’s watches, including this 40mm Museum Classic on a black mesh bracelet (via Movado).

The Gun

Jackie Brown waits for an angry Ordell’s arrival in Max Cherry’s office, armed with Max’s Colt Detective Special that she had previously purloined from the bail bondsman’s glove compartment. In this instance, Max actively gives it to Jackie to defend herself during the sting she had arranged for Ordell’s capture.

Jackie practices drawing the Detective Special to ensure that she’ll have an advantage over Ordell, if needed. As Amy the saleswoman had predicted, Jackie Brown is indisputably “the badass in the room.”

Colt introduced the Detective Special in 1927 alongside its new generation of reliable revolvers marketed toward law enforcement including the Official Police. With a full six-round cylinder of hearty .38 Special ammunition and a “snub-nosed” two-inch barrel, the Colt Detective Special lived up to its name as a “belly gun” preferred by plainclothes policemen, private detectives, and bodyguards as well as becoming an underworld favorite for its balance of easily concealed power. The Detective Special set a new standard for this particular firearm niche, though Smith & Wesson was slow to respond, not offering its own six-shot .38 Special in a snub-nosed frame until nearly a decade later… though S&W would take the competition to the next level with its introduction of the compact, five-shot “Chiefs Special” in 1950.

Colt updated the Detective Special over the course of the 20th century, though the revolver in Max Cherry’s desk and holster appears to be an earlier “Second Series” issue produced between 1947 and 1972. For the most part, these were cosmetically similar to the First Series but with distinguishing features like a serrated ramp on the back of the front sight and a longer ejector rid with a groove around the knurled tip. Finished in Colt’s famous “royal blue” steel, Max’s Detective Special has the traditional wooden grips with the silver-toned Colt medallions as opposed to the plastic grips used on the revolvers produced in the decade following World War II.

Max Cherry’s desk, complete with letterhead forms, branded ballpoint pen, and a loaded .38 snub. The Colt can be identified as a second generation Detective Special by the half-ramped front sight, long (non-shrouded) ejector rod with its grooved knurled tip, and the lack of a locking pin next to the frame screw between the cylinder and the trigger.

Future issues of the Detective Special are markedly different, with shrouded ejector rods and lower, fully ramped front sights on the Third and Fourth Series. Production finally ended in 1995, two years before Jackie Brown was released.

The decision to arm Grier with a snub-nosed .38 was likely selected to reflect the “.38 Airweight” Smith & Wesson carried by Max Cherry—and eventually by Jackie Burke—in the source novel Rum Punch. However, it could have also been Tarantino’s homage to the 2″-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 36 that Grier used, albeit with a superfluous “silencer”, in Coffy.

Pam Grier shot her way to stardom in Coffy nearly a quarter century before Jackie Brown was released.

The Jackie Brown screen-used Detective Special has been auctioned several times, and photos of it with Max Cherry’s holster can be found at Julien’s Live and YourProps.

How to Get the Look

Pam Grier as Jackie Brown in Jackie Brown (1997)

After low-key manipulating most of her network to net a major payday that ties up all loose ends, Jackie Brown dresses to suit her power play in a new black suit and white shirt, the de facto uniform of the badasses in QT’s L.A.

• Black business suit:
  • Single-breasted single-button jacket with notch lapels, wide-welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, functional 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Flat front trousers with flared bottoms
• White slubbed cotton blouse with long-pointed collar, plain front, front darts
• Black leather pumps
• Gold hoop earrings with single silver pearl dangles
• Black PVD-coated steel Movado wristwatch with black “Museum dial” (with gold 12:00 dot and gold hands) and gold crown on black top-stitched calfskin leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie as well as Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch!

The Quote

You got something for me?

Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus (1969)

Vitals

Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman, listless library employee and Army veteran

Radcliffe College (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Fall 1968

Film: Goodbye, Columbus
Release Date: April 3, 1969
Director: Larry Peerce
Costume Designer: Gene Coffin

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Based on a novella by Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus marked the first major screen appearances for both Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, who would receive a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer and a Laurel Award for Female New Face.

Goodbye, Columbus was released two years after The Graduate (though Roth’s source novella was published four years before Charles Webb’s The Graduate), and the similarities invited comparison between the two, with some critics like Dennis Schwartz favoring Goodbye, Columbus though it would be far lesser-known in the decades to follow. Both films cast dark-haired, dark-featured actors in the leading roles of the somewhat awkward and naive young man who spends his summer romancing a “princess”-type against her parents’ wishes—though the Patimkins’ objections are considerably more relatable than the Robinsons had—all scored by a popular contemporary band; in this case, The Association.

Following his performance as the somewhat listless Neil Klugman, Richard Benjamin would again play a Philip Roth surrogate in the lesser-received 1972 adaptation of Portnoy’s Complaint. Benjamin, who turns 82 next week, continues to act in movies and television though he shifted his career in the early ’80s to focus primarily on directing.

What’d He Wear?

Like his cinematic predecessor Benjamin Braddock, Neil Klugman finds comfort in Ivy style staples, particularly when visiting a suddenly estranged Brenda at Radcliffe. Their estrangement is exacerbated into a full-blown breakup when a shaken Brenda reveals that she needs to reevaluate the consequences of their relationship after just learning via letter that her mother had found her diaphragm.

Neil appropriately dresses for his journey to a New England college in the autumn in a tan corduroy sports coat not unlike Dustin Hoffman would famously wear in The Graduate, though Neil’s corded jacket is finished with gilt shank buttons like a blazer. At a tall, lean 6’2″, Richard Benjamin benefits from the balance of a three-button jacket, though his notch lapels just begin to gently roll over the top button for a variation of the classic 3/2-roll that has been colloquialized by some as a “3/2.5 roll”.

Neil is surprised by the unpleasant turn his reunion with Brenda has taken.

The jacket has a welted breast pocket, patch hip pockets with flaps, a long single vent, and two decorative gilt buttons on the cuff of each sleeve.

Made in a thin-waled corduroy also known as “pincord” or “needlecord”, Neil’s jacket has sporty welted stitching along the edges, though the distance between the stitch and the edge appears to be slightly longer than the traditional ¼”.

Neil benefits from the textural coordination of his tufted corduroy jacket and knitted tie, united by the neutralizing versatility of his oxford-cloth shirt.

Like the familiar Benjamin Braddock outfit featured in iconic photography from The Graduate, Neil also wears the Ivy classic light blue oxford cotton button-down shirt under his corduroy jacket, though he swaps out Hoffman’s striped repp tie in favor of a very dark brown knitted tie with the traditional flat, squared bottom.

While knitted ties are best-served when knotted in a four-in-hand or the like, Neil appears to be getting away with a tight half-Windsor that suggests the section of the tie that’s been knotted is tapered to a slimmer section than the rest of the tie’s approximate three-inch width.

Neil wears dark charcoal flat front straight-leg trousers, likely wool or a woolen flannel, with plain-hemmed bottoms that break high over his derby shoes. His shoes and belt are appropriately coordinated in similar dark brown leather.

Neil completes his outfit with a khaki raincoat that he wears with the collar turned up like a shadowy noir hero as he covertly checks into the hotel with Brenda. The fly-front coat has pointed half-tabs on each cuff that close through a single button.

The raincoat-clad Neil may see himself as a Rick Blaine or Philip Marlowe-type as he checks into a hotel with Brenda using an assumed name… but his love story is about to take an ignominious downturn as opposed to the epic, world-saving panache of Rick and Ilsa.

Though it gets little screen time in this sequence, Neil wears his usual steel wristwatch on its expanding bracelet.

Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus (1969)

How to Get the Look

Neil Klugman dresses for his destination when arriving on a New England campus in the fall, comfortably sporting timeless Ivy favorites for a new spin on the corduroy sport jacket and blue OCBD exemplified by his cinematic contemporary Benjamin Braddock.

• Tan corduroy single-breasted blazer with 3/2.5-roll gilt buttons, notch lapels, welted breast pocket, flapped patch hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, long single vent
• Light blue oxford cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Dark brown knitted wool tie
• Dark charcoal wool flat front trousers with belt loops and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown leather belt with brass-toned single-prong buckle
• Dark brown calf leather derby shoes
• Black socks
• Khaki polyester-shell raincoat with fly front, single-button pointed half-tab cuffs, single vent
• Steel watch on expanding bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Philip Roth’s source novella.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.14: “Person to Person”)

Vitals

Jon Hamm as Don Draper, former ad man in search of himself

“Somewhere in California”, Fall 1970

Series: Mad Men
Episode: “Person to Person” (Episode 7.14)
Air Date: May 17, 2015
Director: Matthew Weiner
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Five years ago today, Mad Men‘s final episode “Person to Person” aired on AMC, concluding a decade’s worth of storytelling as we followed advertising director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his family and colleagues as they navigated the tumultuous 1960s.

Few could have anticipated when the pilot episode aired that the confident Madison Avenue hot shot’s corner office domain would be reduced to a lonely corner of a Big Sur retreat by decade’s end, yet it makes sense that his lifelong pattern of retreat—of running away from anything undesirable, be it a poverty-stricken childhood of abuse, the horrors of war, or a dishonest marriage—would find the erstwhile Dick Whitman pushed as far as he can go, from one coast to another until he finds his last refuge at a literal retreat. To continue “moving forward” in Don’s own parlance would mean dropping off of Carmel’s storied cliffs and into the ocean, paralleling his likeness “falling” through the series’ iconic Saul Bass-inspired opening credits… of course, just as Don constantly assures us—and himself—that everything will be okay, that falling figure in the credits always lands back on the couch, looking self-assured and in control with a cigarette in hand.

At the start of the final half-season, Don’s colleague and one-time professional rival Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm) had pitched him on the premise that “there are three women in every man’s life.” Don first scoffs at the seemingly tired trope, but the finale finds the once-aloof ad man striving to make “person-to-person” connections with his trio: his teenage daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka), his ex-wife Betty (January Jones), and—finally—his trusted protégé Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss).

When we had first met each of these women in 1960, they were almost completely reliant on Don. Now, checking in with them at the start of the next decade, they have completely eclipsed his influence with Sally maturing into an independent young woman, Betty sadly left to the uncontrollable fate of her advanced lung cancer, and Peggy at the helm of her own professional ambition. Don’s latest attempts to find a woman to “rescue”—Diana (Elizabeth Reaser) and Stephanie (Caity Lotz)—have both failed and, his natural inclination to retreat no longer an option, he can barely save himself. Hardly a shell of the confident creative director who developed Lucky Strike’s winning advertising strategy on the fly, Don’s final call to Peggy is ostensibly to make up for the fact that he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

“I know you get sick of things and then you run, but… you can come home,” assures Peggy, but Don resists the suggestion, unable to fulfill it not only due to the lack of rides leaving the retreat over the next few days but also the fact that he has no real home to return to…

I messed everything up. I’m not the man you think I am… I broke all my vows, I scandalized my child, I took another man’s name and made nothing of it.

The call is a heartbreaking catharsis for Don and sets Peggy off on her own emotional roller coaster when her subsequent call with Stan Rizzo (Jay R. Ferguson) leads to the free-spirited art director declaring his own love for her, establishing her likelihood of a happy ending balancing professional and personal fulfillment on her own terms.

But… back to Don, who—as communicated by Jon Hamm’s bravura performance—falls into a powerful nervous breakdown at Big Sur. Anyone familiar with suicidal ideation recognizes where his mind is and his own weak assurance that he’s “in a crowd” to wave off Peggy’s reasonable suggestion that he not be alone, ending the call before she could break through his self-reinforced spiraling depression. He sits prone with only his Penney’s bag—the remnants of his life—beside him. Indeed, all that’s left of the man that was once Don Draper has been reduced to a few pieces of clothing in a shopping bag. The penthouse furniture moved out, the business wardrobe and lucrative career abandoned, and his luxury car given away. At the end of “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13), it seemed like freedom for the newly rechristened Dick Whitman to be rid of these belongings, but now this minimalist existence makes it all the more easier for him to throw it—and thus his own life—away.

It feels like that may be the next and final step for Dick, until the airy Sheila (Helen Slater) arrives to take him to his next seminar and thus in the relative but temporary safety of a “crowd” that he assured Peggy would keep him safe. The suggestion is a self-fulfilling prophecy as Don finds himself emotionally moved by a seemingly bland fellow guest named Leonard whose account of his own perceived invisibility allows Don to forge a genuine, authentic person-to-person connection with another human. For once, he truly isn’t alone and thus… he is finally safe.

Some Mad Men fans may have spent seven seasons secretly shipping a Don and Joan romance, but this hug with Leonard was the embrace we never knew we needed.

One particular review of the finale that particularly resonated with me was scribed by John Teti of the ever-exceptional The AV Club, presenting a far more articulate tribute to a top-notch concluding hour for one of my favorite shows. As Teti masterfully describes the scene:

The monologue has Don’s rapt attention as he hears from a kindred spirit—someone else who’s isolated not by their failure to give love but by their inability to receive it.

Don is the opposite of Leonard in some ways. Leonard laments how uninteresting he is, while Don is used to being the center of attention when he walks into a room. But their fundamental pain is the same. Leonard describes a dream of being on a refrigerator shelf. He’s aware that there’s a party going on outside, a joy that he can see in the smiles of people who open the door and look in on him. But they never pick him to join the party. Leonard’s vision is a permutation of Don’s purgatory, in which Don is surrounded by tantalizing images of a happy, fulfilled life and maddened by the impossibility of making them real. Like Leonard, Don can describe the happiness that he envisions—in fact, he’s built a career out of describing it—he just can’t sample it for himself.

Don faltered in that first exercise, when he was asked to wordlessly show his feelings toward another person in the room, but now he can’t hold himself back. He wraps his arms around Leonard and sobs, an unspoken show of gratitude for someone who shares his fundamental struggle to connect.

Don’s emotional connection provides the viewer with a brief sense of comfort that allows the show to break away and present vignettes of how the rest of Mad Men world is being sent off into the seventies: Pete and Trudy Campbell, reconciled and beginning a new life in Wichita… a fiercely independent Joan Holloway-Harris kicking off what promises to be a successful self-owned business… a rakish, retired Roger Sterling living la belle vie with Marie Calvet, having finally found a partner appropriate both in age and temperament… Sally Draper, forced into the role of caretaker for her younger siblings and her own mother, who continues to defiantly blow smoke in the face of her fatal lung cancer diagnosis… and Peggy and Stan, working late but together. We see that everyone will be fine, at least for now… but what about Don Draper?

The final diegetic shot of the series pans across the Big Sur coast at dawn to Don, sitting barefoot, cross-legged, and content among a crowd practicing sun salutations as the leader promises “a new day, new ideas… a new you.”

What’d He Wear?

Audiences watched Don Draper complete his journey from the archetypal “man in the gray flannel suit” to the man in the plaid flannel shirt, a transformation that may have shocked viewers initially attracted to the show’s well-tailored mid-century business suits. Despite this sartorial shift, Janie Bryant’s acclaimed costume design neatly suits the Don we’re seeing in this moment: stripped down to his roots, a son of rural Pennsylvania dressed in the rugged garb long associated with its hardworking denizens.

Don may have always needed his finely tailored gray worsted suits for work at the office, but he has his hardest work ahead of him—emotional growth—and needs to be dressed appropriately. Despite cyclical appropriation by the counter-cultural set of the moment (in the ’90s, grunge; by the late 2000s, hipsters), plaid flannel shirts have been a staple of rural laborers since at least 1850 when Woolrich Woolen Mills in Pennsylvania borrowed the Scottish “Rob Roy” plaid and rechristened it “buffalo check” when marketing these distinctive red-and-black woolen shirts to local lumberjacks. (You can read more about this history from Stitch Fix.) More than a century later, titans like Carhartt and Pendleton had entered the game and plaid flannel in various tartans and colorways was going mainstream thanks to stars like Marilyn Monroe… who was decidedly not a lumberjack. Still, these hard-wearing shirts maintained their association with rugged outdoorsmen.

Until this episode, Don Draper had never so sartorially connected with his roots, dressing even for the occasional manual labor in outfits like an open brown linen button-up with khakis and loafers as seen in “Marriage of Figaro” (Episode 1.03). Even while traversing the country in “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13), the previous episode, his plaid shirt was more of a sports shirt that wouldn’t look totally out of place in a Manhattan executive’s weekend wardrobe.

But now, clad in flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots, Don has reverted to Dick Whitman, back at the same crossroad he had faced decades earlier with the choice to determine if he will begin his new life again with deception and the power of convincing appearances… or with emotional openness and honesty that encourages genuine growth.

Don Draper’s visual transformation to a lumberjack by the series finale was arguably better executed than on Dexter…

Don’s shirt is patterned in a brown, aqua blue, and off-white tartan plaid cotton flannel twill, with a point collar, two patch pockets with mitred corners, and button cuffs that he wears undone and rolled up his forearms. All seven buttons up the front are a slightly lighter brown four-hole sew-through plastic.

In their infinite wisdom, Mad Men superfans and style experts Tom and Lorenzo noted the significance of Don’s blue and brown shirt:

Don’s breakdown—this time; because he’s had about a half-dozen in the last ten years—was partially spurred on by his fascination with Diana, who notably wore two different uniforms when we first met her, one in pale blue and one in brown. That color combo has haunted Don and hung over this season, repeating again and again. When he couldn’t rescue Diana, he turned to Stephanie, another mother who abandoned her child, and transferred all his energy to her. When she bolted from his weirdly obsessive attention and bad advice (“Oh, Dick. I don’t think you’re right about that.”) he turned to another woman who gave her child up [Peggy]…

Don has never looked more modern than he does right here. This costume could be put on a man his age in 2015 and not look odd. That’s also not insignificant, since he’s about to have a breakthrough moment that will propel him out of his past and into the present and future.

Don’s dark blue stonewash denim Levi’s 501 jeans are the same as he had worn with his Levi’s trucker jacket at the start of the episode. These “Original Fit” jeans are essentially unchanged since Levi Strauss & Co. modernized the 501® in 1947, though they can be identified as post-1964 jeans due to alignment of the belt loop along the back of the center seat seam. According to the ScreenBid auction that followed the end of series production, Don’s jeans were sized 36×33.

Don wears his jeans with a thick dark brown leather belt that closes through a large squared brass single-prong buckle.

Don comforts Leonard (and, by extension, himself); Leonard’s attire resembles something we’re more used to seeing Don or his colleagues wearing for a dressed-down weekend.

Don wears dirty dark brown leather plain-toe work boots, derby-laced through three sets of brass eyelets with three brass speed hooks up the ankle-high shaft. They are typical combat-inspired work boots of the era, similar to what was offered by the venerated Minnesota-based shoemaker Red Wing during the 1960s as these vintage examples from Red Wing Amsterdam and Prairie La Crosse illustrate. In fact, Don’s boots are one set of eyelets shy of being nearly identical to the currently offered Red Wing Heritage Blacksmith 6-inch boot in copper “rough and tough” leather (available via Amazon and  Red Wing).

The boots have tan contrast stitching and hard dark brown leather soles. His tall black socks are likely the same Gold Toe socks he’s been wearing throughout his cross-country travels.

He may have given up his Cadillac and his penthouse apartment, but we can’t blame Don for holding onto his classic Omega Seamaster DeVille, the same luxury watch he had started wearing at the start of the fifth season. Mad Men property master Ellen Freund worked with vintage watch specialist Derek Dier to select the period-correct timepieces for the series, including this Omega that Christie’s auctioned for $11,875 in December 2015.

The Christie’s listing describes the watch as “Signed Omega, Automatic, Seamaster, De Ville, Ref. 166.020, Movement No. 23’943’081, Circa 1960.” It has a slim steel 34mm case, a black cross-hair dial with a date window at 3:00, and is worn on a textured black leather strap.

An Omega on his wrist and Peggy on the phone are Don’s only remaining tangible links to the materialistically prosperous but emotionally empty life he abandoned in New York.

By episode’s end, Dick Whitman has made his decision; rather than beginning his new life in another man’s uniform and restarting his maddening cycle of dishonesty, he is barefoot, clad only in a clean white shirt and crisp khakis, a vulnerable outfit but one symbolizing his readiness to begin his new life with a clean slate.

The dawn of a new Don. Note that his white shirt isn’t one of his French-cuffed dress shirts but rather a more casual oxford shirt with button-down collar and button cuffs.

How to Get the Look

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.14: “Person to Person”)

For some, Don Draper may present his most accessible (and comfortable) outfit to date in the closing half of the series finale, dressing for his existential despair and depression at Big Sur in a plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots.

• Brown, blue, and off-white tartan plaid cotton flannel twill work shirt with point collar, front placket, two patch chest pockets, and button cuffs
• Dark blue stonewash denim Levi’s 501 Original Fit jeans
• Dark brown thick leather belt with squared brass single-prong buckle
• Dark brown leather plain-toe work boots with three-eyelet derby lacing and three speed hook sets
• Black Gold Toe socks
• White cotton boxer shorts
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator

In a pinch, this 9 Crowns lightweight flannel shirt in brown, blue, and cream flannel (via Amazon) could work, but I’d recommend searching harder to find a more vividly colored vintage piece if you want to channel Don’s look.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series… or just the final season, if you still haven’t caught up or need to complete your collection.

I also liked “Nine Lessons from Mad Men: The Emotional Cost of Dishonesty” written by Michal Ann Strahilevitz, Ph.D., for Psychology Today, which cites examples from across the series but particularly these powerful scenes from the finale.

The Quote

People just come and go… and no one says goodbye?

Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park (1993)

Vitals

Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, “rock star” chaos theorist

“Isla Nublar”, 120 miles west of Costa Rica, Summer 1993

Film: Jurassic Park
Release Date: June 11, 1993
Director: Steven Spielburg
Costumes: Mitchell Ray Kenney, Sue Moore, Kelly Porter, and Eric H. Sandberg

Background

International Dinosaur Day is celebrated twice a year, always on June 1st but also the third Tuesday in May, making today—May 19, 2020—the first observance of Dinosaur Day for the year. Why the chaotic timing?

The answer to questions like that may rest with a chaos theorist like Dr. Ian Malcolm, the swaggering, skeptical, and somewhat frantic mathematician portrayed by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, adapted from Michael Crichton’s novel.

“I bring the scientists, you bring a rock star,” the park’s exuberant founder John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) comments upon the first impressions that Dr. Malcolm makes on Hammond’s distinguished guests from the scientific community, Drs. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern).

“You’ll have to get used to Dr. Malcolm, he suffers from a deplorable excessive personality… especially for a mathematician,” Hammond adds. “Chaotician,” Ian corrects.

Despite the chaotician’s cavalier attitude, Ian proves to be the first of the group that was selected to audit the island’s safety to vocalize his well-informed skepticism of Hammond’s manipulation of nature, decrying the “violent, penetrative act” of discovery. Although unapologetically presenting himself as a bit of a cad—e.g. proudly declaring that he’s “always on the lookout for the next ex-Mrs. Malcolm”—Ian illustrates his heroism early on, creating a diversion to draw the attention of a Tyrannosaurus rex so that Dr. Grant could save Hammond’s two endangered grandchildren. The gambit results in an injury for Dr. Malcolm, with the more gruesome fate is reserved for the cowardly “bloodsucking lawyer” Donald Gennero (Martin Ferrero).

Ian’s leg injury puts him relatively out of commission for the rest of the movie’s action, though this doesn’t prevent Jeff Goldblum from deep breathing through a few seconds of ostensible fanservice that has been immortalized by countless GIFs, a Funko POP! figure, and even a 25-foot statue erected in London for Jurassic Park‘s 25th anniversary.

The legacy of the moment hasn’t been lost on Goldblum himself, who has recounted the moment as what felt like an organic addition to a scene in a tropical climate where his wounded character was “suffering manfully.”

What’d He Wear?

While the khaki-clad scientists are clearly dressed for an expedition into nature and Hammond’s white guayabera and matching slacks are ideal for the tropical climate, Dr. Ian Malcolm is blatantly dressed for neither.

The screenplay described Ian’s attire only as “all in black, with snakeskin boots and sunglasses,” consistent with the literary Malcolm telling Ellie Sattler that he only dresses in black and gray so as to avoid wasting any time considering his outfit. (The book, released in 1990, may have borrowed from Goldblum’s previous explanation for his character’s fashion in 1986’s The Fly, which he suggested was inspired by Albert Einstein.) It’s not surprising that fellow mathematicians Einstein and Malcolm would share similar approaches to dressing, and we know Albert appreciated leather jackets as well via the Levi’s “Menlo” he notably wore for his Time magazine cover in 1938.

For his trip to Isla Nublar, Dr. Malcolm drapes his all-black underpinnings with a black leather jacket, detailed like a sports jacket and slightly oversized per prevailing trends of the early ’90s. The single-breasted jacket has notch lapels with a buttonhole through the left lapel. The jacket has a two flat black plastic sew-through buttons to close, bisected by a seam that extends across the jacket’s waist line and meets the top of each widely jetted hip pocket. Malcolm’s leather jacket also has a welted breast pocket, single vent, and functioning three-button cuffs.

Unlike his companions, the maverick Dr. Malcolm seemingly had no interest in changing his normal style of dress for the climate or context.

Jeff Goldblum in May 1992, wearing the same black leather jacket he would wear later that year as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park. (Photo by Ron Galella)

Ian Malcolm may survive the events of Jurassic Park, but his leather jacket remains a casualty, ostensibly abandoned in the Ford Explorer before his heroic, flare-blazing dash to save the Hammond grandchildren. Evidently, he prioritized picking up a replacement in the years to follow as he’s seen wearing a strikingly similar garment by the events of The Lost World.

Goldblum’s original screen-worn leather jacket from Jurassic Park was just auctioned in December 2019. The iCollector listing shares that the jacket was a product of North Beach Leathers Co., an appropriate fit for the “rock star” theorist as the San Francisco-based leather shop started by Bill Morgan in 1967 had crafted eight custom-made leather suits for Elvis Presley in the early ’70s.

In fact, it’s most likely that this jacket was Goldblum’s own. In May 1992, three months before filming had even started on Jurassic Park, Goldblum was photographed by Ron Galella attending the Beverly Hills premiere of his film The Favour, the Watch, and the Very Big Fish, wearing the exact same jacket, right down to what the listing describes as the “wishbone-shaped repair”, an inverted V on the jacket’s right shoulder between the armhole and collar that can be clearly seen in the movie.

(Another Galella photo from a separate 1992 event shows Goldblum dressed even closer to Ian Malcolm’s look in a silky black shirt, dark jeans, and even similar glasses.)

Dr. Malcolm finds himself staggered by “the lack of humility before nature.”

Dr. Malcolm’s silky black shirt is a collarless “neckband” shirt, a style that rose during the early ’80s as a throwback to the old-fashioned dress shirts that would be worn with stiff collars attached to them via gold studs. When Thomas Magnum and his ilk began wearing these, it was purely for casual wear, though the collarless look became so popular for men that, for a brief—but not brief enough—period during the 1990s, they were popular replacements for dress shirts with black tie (sans the tie, of course), as the otherwise sensible Tom Hanks wore when accepting his second Oscar during the 1995 Academy Awards.

It’s this shirt that Goldblum famously wore fully unbuttoned for the brief vignette as he observes the action from a corner of the room, though he mostly wears the shirt’s black buttons fastened up the plain front to mid-chest through the horizontal buttonholes, revealing much of his exposed chest as well as the sterling silver chain-link necklace he wears with a turquoise setting on the uneven pendant. The shirt also has a breast pocket and button cuffs, which he often wears unfastened and rolled up past his elbows.

Invariably blue for the better part of a century, jeans first prominently appeared in black denim during the 1950s, a decade when jeans themselves were transforming from workwear icon to countercultural symbol thanks to wearers like Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Elvis Presley.

Ian Malcolm may have dressed with form rather than function in mind for his trip to Isla Nublar, but at least his selection of black pants are the more durable denim jeans than dressier trousers or slacks. He wears them with a thick black edge-stitched leather belt with a gold-toned single prong buckle, removing the belt and using it to tourniquet his own leg after sustaining an injury distracting the T-rex from chasing Tim and Lex.

While Drs. Grant and Sattler seek to diagnose the sick Triceratops‘s ailment by excavating its excrement, Dr. Malcolm can’t help but to be amazed by “one big pile of shit.”

Consistent with his “bad boy” persona, Dr. Malcolm’s black harness boots are an evolution of the motorcycle boots famously worn by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.

Unlike the adjustable leather strap rigged across the ankle on traditional engineer boots, harness boots are distinguished by a ring on each side of the ankle that is fitted through a system of four non-adjustable straps: one across the top of the foot, one around the heel, and a shorter one that connects the ring to the sole on each side. Straps tend to be secured around the ring with a single or double stud fastening, with the latter more prevalent. These strap-and-ring elements were added when this square-toed boot was pioneered in the 1960s to provide extra protection to motorcyclists.

Many bootmakers have specialized in harness boots of different colors and sizes since they were pioneered during the 1960s with makers including Ad Tec (via Amazon), Durango (via Amazon and Boot Barn), Frye (via Amazon and Boot Barn), Harley Davidson (via Amazon and Boot Barn), and King Rocks (via Amazon).

“Must go faster…”

Ian Malcolm’s tinted glasses with their solid black rectangular frames are part of his signature look. With the double silver pin detailing on the temples, Ian’s specs are widely believed to be Oliver Peoples, supported by a CR Men article presented by OP as well as the character’s inclusion in a list of OP wearers published in Waterloo, Iowa’s The Courier in 1997. Of the brand’s current offerings, the Oliver Peoples OV5102 “Denison” in matte black acetate look to be the nearest modern approximation to Dr. Malcolm’s eyewear (available via Amazon or Oliver Peoples).

In the decades since Jurassic Park, Goldblum has continued to incorporate distinctive glasses and sunglasses into his off-screen looks, with Jacque Marie Mage and Tom Ford particularly cited in recent examples.

Ian wears a large sterling silver statement ring on the third finger of his right hand, ornately detailed with the relief cast of an eagle spreading its wings, flanked by a small coral stone and a turquoise stone in sawtooth settings, the latter coordinating with the pendant around his neck. This ring was also auctioned in December 2019 with more details and a photo of the actual ring found on iCollector. Similar attractive rings can be found by searching the wares of Native American artisans like this similar piece by Navajo artist Grace Smith (via Little Feathers).

He also wears a stainless steel chronograph with a black dial, secured around his left wrist with a black leather strap top-stitched along the edges. Though the watch remains unidentified as of April 2020, a WatchUSeek forum has yielded suggestions including Breitling, Dodane, Hamilton, and Heuer, the latter thought to be the most likely contender.

Dr. Malcolm attempts to work his chaotic charm on Dr. Sattler. (In real life, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern would date for two years following the production of Jurassic Park.

Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park (1993)

How to Get the Look

It’s difficult to ascertain how much Jeff Goldblum‘s personal style influenced Ian Malcolm’s on-screen attire in Jurassic Park (or vice versa)… but it’s safe to say that if it’s black, Dr. Malcolm would wear it.

• Black leather single-breasted two-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, functional 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• Black silk neckband shirt with plain front, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Black denim jeans
• Black leather belt with gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather harness boots with silver rings
• Black socks (assumed)
• Black rectangular-framed tinted Oliver Peoples glasses
• Gold chain-link necklace with turquoise-set pendant
• Stainless silver eagle relief-cast ring with sawtooth-set coral and turquoise stones
• Stainless steel chronograph watch with black dial on black edge-stitched leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and Michael Crichton’s original novel.

For more of Goldblum’s insight into Jurassic Park, I suggest this 25th anniversary retrospective interview with Bill Bradley for The Huffington Post.

The Quote

Life, uh, finds a way.

James Garner as Pete Aron in Grand Prix (1966)

Vitals

James Garner as Pete Aron, determined Formula One driver

Monaco, Spring 1966

Film: Grand Prix
Release Date: December 21, 1966
Director: John Frankenheimer
Costume Supervisor: Sydney Guilaroff

Background

The 2020 Monaco Grand Prix was to begin today, which also commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Monaco Grand Prix’s first inclusion in the inaugural FIA World Championship. Unfortunately, the spread of the dangerous coronavirus pandemic resulted in the race being cancelled for the first time since the 1954 Formula One season.

“In my opinion, still the best picture ever made about auto racing,” wrote James Garner in his memoir, The Garner Files, an opinion into which I put a lot of stock given the actor’s real-life passion for racing and his characteristic modest regarding his own cinematic career.

Grand Prix features an all-star international cast against the backdrop of the 1966 F1 season, beginning with an accident during the Monaco Grand Prix that lands English driver Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford) in the hospital and reckless American driver Pete Aron (Garner) in the Mediterranean. Following a brief moment of introspection with tired French champion Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand), Aron debuts his Shelby Mustang GT-350H when he drives to the hospital where he observes Stoddard’s wife Pat (Jessica Walter) hassled by journalists as she leaves her injured husband’s bedside.

While his co-stars—particularly Bedford—struggled with the driving scenes, Garner proved to be a natural talent behind the wheel, aided by two months of tutelage of the celebrated Bob Bondurant, and performed many of the driving stunts himself, including the dangerous sequence during the British Grand Prix when a fuel leak sets his car aflame while flying through Brands Hatch at nearly 130 miles per hour.

“Making Grand Prix was the most fun I’ve ever had on a movie,” wrote Garner. “Hell, it was the most fun I’ve ever had, period! Six months with the best cars and the best drivers on the best circuits in the world… for a guy who’d always loved cars and racing, it was a fantasy come true… It was an honor to be on the same track [as the Grand Prix drivers], and those guys went out of their way to help me. They pointed out the correct line through corners, briefed me on what to do in a spinout, and generally showed me the ropes. Between shots, we did some impromptu racing. We’d do a choreographed shot with five or six cars passing and jockeying, and when we cut we’d all turn around and race back.”

Winner of three Academy Awards—including Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Effects—Grand Prix inspired Garner’s lifelong passion for motor-sports, which he would celebrate in the 1969 documentary The Racing Scene that chronicled the last of his three years of ownership of the American International Racers team.

What’d He Wear?

Pete Aron’s sporty smart casual outfit is perfectly suitable for a stylish young race car driver in the golden age of F1, anchored by a stone-colored nylon jacket. With its ribbed-knit cotton collar and cuffs, Aron’s zip-front jacket is among the multitude of men’s outerwear inspired by the classic military bomber jacket. The fly fastens to a button at the neck and on the waist hem, similar to the iconic Derby of San Francisco jackets first marketed in 1963 (and recently revived by Victor Suarez), but it lacks the Derby’s signature horizontal yoke, second waist button, and flashy lining. Aron’s jacket has an “umbrella” storm flap across the back and straight side hand pockets.

Aron is nonplussed by his injured fellow racer’s condition in the hospital.

Aron wears the subdued shirt-and-sweater combination of a white cotton oxford shirt with a narrow button-down collar under a black merino wool long-sleeved sweater with a ribbed V-shaped neckline.

Aron watches as his black BRM race car is retrieved from the Mediterranean.

Aron’s charcoal gray flat front slacks are likely the same beltless trousers that he later wears with his burgundy broadcaster’s blazer, styled with slanted front pockets, no back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. He wears black leather loafers and black socks.

Aron descends into the hotel lobby to meet Sarti and a gaggle of international press.

The stone blouson jacket appears again during a brief split-screen vignette following the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, where Stoddard made his winning comeback. A disgruntled Aron, clad in a black polo shirt (with “popped” collar) and taupe trousers, pops a bottle of Veuve Clicquot before handing it off to his mechanics.

While Stoddard receives praise for his Dutch Grand Prix victory, Aron spots a bucket of Veuve.

Aron wears the jacket again while reviewing racing footage with his new racing chief Izo Yamura (Toshiro Mifune) prior to the British Grand Prix, wearing it semi-zipped over a cream button-down shirt.

Yamura talks Aron through his nonperformance on the track.

Aron’s stone jacket makes its final appearance as he pulls his GT350H into the paddock before the climactic Italian Grand Prix at Monza later that summer, worn over his white racing suit.

The scene also provides a glimpse of Aron’s steel-cased watch, worn over his left wrist on a black leather strap. The white dial and single crown tell us that this isn’t the black-dialed Heuer Carrera 3647N he would wear for much of The Rockford Files a decade later, despite receiving it as a 38th birthday gift around the time Grand Prix was in production. (Read more about Garner’s real-life Carrera 3647N in this well-researched Calibre 11 article from August 2017.)

Pat offers support for her husband Scott: “Hope he beats you by at least ten laps today,” “I’m glad you feel that way,” Pete responds.

The potential perils of F1 racing is underscored by checking in with each racer prior to the Italian Grand Prix by introducing them with a close-up of their ID bracelet, followed by a vignette of their pre-race preparations. Aron wears his stainless ID bracelet on his right wrist, etched with the black-filled text “PETE ARON / BLOOD TYPE B.”

The Car

I wrote more extensively about these famous “Rent-a-Racers” in my first Grand Prix post, but my fascination with this fruitful collaboration between Ford, Shelby, and Hertz compelled me to include it again, particularly as Pete Aron’s 1966 Shelby Mustang GT350H is most prominently seen when he’s at the wheel wearing the outfit featured in this post. Hertz offered these fastback Mustangs during the late 1960s, painted to promote the rental company’s corporate color scheme with gold LeMans racing stripes and rocker stripes on a black body.

Pete watches from the driver’s seat of his GT350H as Pat Stoddard is mobbed by reporters as she leaves her injured husband’s hospital.

Within a year of Ford debuting its now-legendary Mustang for the “1964½” model year, Carroll Shelby embraced the powerful pony car’s potential and adopted its design for his own performance-based marque, introducing the Shelby Mustang GT350 later in 1965. Unlike the Ford Mustang, which balanced performance with relative luxury, Shelby’s GT350 was initially designed solely to be a street machine, though subsequent model years would see the addition of options that increased driver comfort and ease of driving. The GT350 was produced only with the highest performing Mustang engine, the 289 cubic-inch “Windsor” V8 with a larger 4-barrel Holley carburetor, glasspack dual exhaust, and high-riser aluminum intake manifold contributing to the increased power output of 306 horsepower.

By 1966, Shelby’s popular Mustang was being marketed solely as the “Shelby GT350” with “Mustang” dropped from the name. The company entered into a partnership with the Hertz Corporation to offer 1,000 GT350s—with another 800 pushed by Ford—to the company for rental use that would be returned, refurbished, and resold after their rental use… though legend has it that many of these Mustangs were returned to Hertz by weekend racers often with a lesser engine swapped in for the Shelby-modified HiPo 289 and even evidence that roll bars had been welded inside the car.

While most of the GT350H Mustangs were fitted with Ford’s “Cruise-o-Matic” three-speed automatic transmission, the first 85—including the one driven by James Garner in Grand Prix—had the four-speed Borg Warner T-10 manual transmission. These original “Rent-a-Racers” remain particularly desirable for collectors. (Check out full specs for the ’66 GT350H with four-speed manual here.)

1966 Shelby Mustang GT350H

Body Style: 2-door fastback

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 289 cu. in. (4.7 L) Ford “Windsor” K-code V8 with 4-barrel Holley 715 CFM carburetor

Power: 306 bhp (228 kW; 310 PS) @ 6000 RPM

Torque: 329 lb·ft (446 N·m) @ 4200 RPM

Transmission: 4-speed manual

Wheelbase: 108 inches (2743 mm)

Length: 181.6 inches (4613 mm)

Width: 68.2 inches (1732 mm)

Height: 51.2 inches (1300 mm)

The car’s association with Grand Prix emerged when champion race car driver Bob Bondurant agreed to train James Garner, who he described as a “natural” behind the wheel of a fast car. Bondurant was a member of the Shelby American racing team, bringing the team a victory piloting a Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe during the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1964. The following year, Carroll Shelby’s service as Grand Prix‘s “technical consultant” including loaning a 1966 Shelby GT350H (chassis #6S611) to the production for Garner and Bondurant to share while on- and off-screen. Bondurant recalled that “the car drew a crowd everywhere Jim and I drove it. Every time we parked, there were more people around it than any Ferrari.” You can read more about Bondurant and Garner’s experience training for the film and see photos of the actual GT350H, recently restored to show quality, in Matt Stone’s 2015 article for Mustang 360°.

Ford revived the original Hertz concept with an updated Shelby GT-H, introduced during the 2006 New York Auto Show to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the original GT350H. This limited run of 500 Mustangs, only available through the Hertz car rental agency, maintained the spirit of the original with its gold-on-black paint scheme and performance upgrades.

How to Get the Look

James Garner as Pete Aron in Grand Prix (1966)

Casual attire is often the most susceptible to dating poorly, but James Garner’s dressed-down layers in Grand Prix remain tasteful and timeless more than a half-century later.

• Stone nylon waist-length bomber-style jacket with ribbed-knit cotton collar and cuffs, zip-front fly with neck and hem buttons, straight side hand pockets, and “umbrella”-style rear storm flap
• White cotton long-sleeved shirt with narrow button-down collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Black wool long-sleeved V-neck sweater
• Charcoal wool flat front trousers with beltless waistband, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather loafers
• Black socks
• Stainless steel identity bracelet (with name and blood type: “Pete Aron | Blood Type B.”)
• Stainless steel wristwatch with white dial on black leather strap (with steel single-prong buckle)

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 5.05: “Irregular Around the Margins”)

Vitals

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, New Jersey mob boss

Newark, New Jersey, Spring 2004

Series: The Sopranos
Episode: “Irregular Around the Margins” (Episode 5.05)
Air Date: April 4, 2004
Director: Allen Coulter
Creator: David Chase
Costume Designer: Juliet Polcsa

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Memorial Day weekend has traditionally been the unofficial start of the summer season with cookouts and amusement park openings, despite the solstice itself still being a month away. (Today also concludes Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK, highlighting a topic that anchors to The Sopranos‘ central narrative.)

Many spent time during self-isolation this spring to catch up on classic TV shows, with The Sopranos frequently cited as a show that people were re-watching or discovering for the first time. As we’re hopefully moving away from the weeks and months of social distancing, I want to take a look at one of many summer-friendly looks from the show’s central character, conflicted Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano played by James Gandolfini, who deservedly racked up three Emmy Awards among other accolades for his portrayal. Tony brings a summery sartorial spirit to a moment of isolated indoor frivolity in “Irregular Around the Margins”, the memorable fifth episode of The Sopranos‘ fifth season.

“Whoops,” Tony chuckles as he walks in on Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo) doing a line in the back office of the Crazy Horse, her Newark club. “You want?” she asks. Tony takes a beat before agreeing to join, being sure to lock the door behind him lest someone catch the skip partaking in illicit drugs, and with the girlfriend of a colleague, no less. She technically was supposed to have the day off, hence Tony scheduling a meeting with Phil Leotardo, but she explains that she doesn’t like to be home alone. However, the newly sober Christopher’s absence on a cigarette smuggling mission also frees Adriana up to pursue her chemical highs without his judgment.

On the contrary, she finds a non-judgmental, seemingly carefree friend in Tony, in whom she can confide that she was once scared of him. She reassures him that this fear has subsided, though part of her must know that her secret status as an FBI informant would likely result in Tony—latent attraction to her or not—ordering her execution faster than she could order another White Russian. (“She’s got diarrhea,” Chris had matter-of-factly explained to his crew before they left for North Carolina, an affliction for which she’s chosen White Russian cocktails as an ill-advised form of self-medication.)

Bonding over Christopher’s “constipated owl look” and partaking together in drugs and darts nearly lead to Tony and Adriana consummating what must have been years of a hidden mutual attraction… until they’re thankfully interrupted by the arrival of Phil Leotardo and Joe Peeps. “Without that knock, thought, you just know Tony would have made a move, consequences be damned, because it’s in his nature,” write Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz in The Soprano Sessions. “No matter the danger, the man always gives in to temptation.”

(Interestingly, the last time I wrote about Tony Soprano’s style it was published after a post about James Garner’s style on The Rockford Files. This time, it’s right after a post looking at one of Garner’s looks in Grand Prix. Weird coincidence.)

What’d He Wear?

Tony Soprano had been a fan of printed shirts, including tropical designs, since we met him during The Sopranos‘ first season, though his separation from Carmela during the fifth season finds him seemingly sporting more summery floral shirts than ever. Many of these have been well-chronicled by my friend @TonySopranoStyle on his in-depth Instagram account, including this floral shirt and pleated trousers from “Irregular Around the Margins” which was also included in a June 2008 Christie’s auction of clothing and memorabilia from the show’s production.

Tony’s Aloha-style silk shirt illustrates how a floral print doesn’t necessarily require tropical colors, presented in a relatively muted colorway of black and taupe flowers in a symmetrical panel print of single vertical strips against a beige ground. As described by AlohaFunWear, “an Aloha panel shirt arranges its print—as the name would suggest—in one or more vertical panels. By bringing some organization to their vibrant design, they offer a more sophisticated look for casual office days and Tiki bars while still capturing the spirit of the island.”

The auction listing confirmed the manufacturer as Burma Bibas, a New York City luxury menswear outfitter established in 1926 that specializes in colorful, unique printed silk sport shirts including many that Gandolfini wore across all six seasons of The Sopranos. While made in New York City and thus not an authentic Hawaiian shirt, this floral short-sleeved shirt follows the classic Aloha shirt pattern with its flat camp collar (with a loop) and straight hem with short side vents. The shirt has seven buttons up the plain front and a square, button-through breast pocket cut from material to seamlessly match the floral pattern overlaying it. The shirt’s ample elbow-length short sleeves are consistent with its overall generous fit.

You know that face you make when you’re almost caught doing something you feel guilty about?

Tony neatly coordinates the colors in the shirt’s print with the rest of his outfit, echoing the taupe flowers with his taupe pleated trousers and the black flowers with his shoes and likely his belt as well.

Confirmed by the auction listing to be Slates, a sub-brand of Dockers, Tony’s trousers have double reverse pleats, on-seam side pockets that curve inward toward the top (“quarter top”), jetted back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms. His black leather shoes are likely the same apron-toe tassel loafers he wears in the immediately following scene at his therapist’s office.

Tony’s usual assortment of gold jewelry and accessories is anchored by his luxury watch, an 18-karat yellow gold Rolex Day-Date “President” self-winding chronometer. The innovative watch was the first to include both the full day of the week and date, located along the top of the dial and in a 3:00 window, respectively, on Tony’s gold dial. The watch is secured to Tony’s left wrist via the signature three-piece “President”—or “Presidential”—link bracelet that was introduced by Rolex alongside the watch itself in 1956; the heavier bracelet and the polished lugs were used by BAMF Style reader Chris to more definitively identify Tony’s Day-Date as a ref. 18238 (rather than the frequently misidentified ref. 118238.)

On the opposing wrist, Tony wears his 18-karat gold link bracelet with a custom fancy curb link with what @TonySopranoStyle describes as “if a Cuban curbed link chain and an Italian Figaro link chain with a twist had a baby,” fastened with a safety clasp that provides more continuity than a “lobster”-style clasp.

Retrieving the dropped darts, Adriana and Tony share a brief but intense “moment”.

Tony wears his usual gold pinky ring on his right hand with its bypass ruby-and-diamonds, though he has stopped wearing his gold wedding band due to animosity of his separation with Carmela that began at the end of the previous season. He also wears his usual gold St. Jerome medallion on a thin gold necklace.

How to Get the Look

James Gandolfini and Drea de Matteo on The Sopranos (Episode 5.05: “Irregular Around the Margins”)

Tony Soprano brings a beachy vibe to the back room of the Crazy Horse with his earthy-toned panel print Aloha shirt, a subdued alternative to some of the brighter tropical prints he wears by the water.

• Beige (with black and taupe floral panel print) silk short-sleeve Aloha-style camp shirt with loop collar, 7-button plain front, button-through breast pocket, and straight hem with short side vents
• Taupe double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, “quarter top” side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather belt with single-prong buckle
• Black leather apron-toe tassel loafers
• Black socks
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
• Rolex Day-Date “President” 18238 chronometer watch in 18-karat yellow gold with champagne-colored dial and “President” link bracelet
• Gold curb-chain link bracelet
• Gold pinky ring with bypassing ruby and diamond stones
• Gold wedding ring
• Gold open-link chain necklace with round St. Jerome pendant

To see more of Tony’s fashions from the show, I recommend you follow my friend @TonySopranoStyle on Instagram. If you’re curious about Aloha shirts and styles, you’d be well-served to follow my friend Aloha Spotter’s blog and Instagram account.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series and its excellent literary companion The Sopranos Sessions by TV critics and die-hard fans Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz. While the series itself was removed from Amazon Prime last week, it will be fully available alongside HBO’s full stable of shows once HBO Max launches this Wednesday.

The Quote

You’re not scared of me now… are you?

John Wayne as Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn in True Grit (1969)

Vitals

John Wayne as Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn, tough Deputy U.S. Marshal

Fort Smith, Arkansas, into Indian Territory, Fall 1880

Film: True Grit
Release Date: June 12, 1969
Director: Henry Hathaway
Costume Designer: Dorothy Jeakins
Wardrobe: Luster Bayless (uncredited)

Background

To commemorate John Wayne’s birthday 113 years ago today on May 26, 1907, let’s take a look at one of Duke’s most enduring roles and the one that won him the Academy Award after more than forty years making over 200 movies.

Swiftly adapted from Charles Portis’ source novel of the same name, True Grit follows 14-year-old Mattie Ross as she seeks the help of a drunken U.S. Marshal, chosen by virtue of his reputation as the meanest marshal, to avenge the murder of her father. John Wayne was enthusiastic to play the cantankerous drunkard Rooster Cogburn as soon as he read Portis’ novel and even moreso after reading Marguerite Roberts’ screenplay, but the rest of the cast was not as easily secured. Contenders to play Mattie included Mia Farrow, Sally Field, Tuesday Weld, and even Wayne’s own daughter Aissa before the role went to the 21-year-old Kim Darby. Hiring Elvis Presley for the part of LeBoeuf the swaggering Texas Ranger would have meant agreeing to bill him above John Wayne, so the filmmakers went with Glen Campbell, whose theme song for True Grit received the film’s only other Oscar nomination.

“If I’d have known… I would have put that patch on thirty-five years earlier,” Wayne joked when accepting his own Oscar at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion during the 42nd Academy Awards ceremony in April 1970. (He had also reportedly quipped “beginner’s luck” in Barbra Streisand’s ear when she presented him with the award.) Though perhaps humbled in the moment, Wayne later explained in his May 1971 interview for Playboy: “I really didn’t need an Oscar. I’m a box-office champion with a record they’re going to have to run to catch. And they won’t.”

John Wayne’s Oscar signified a transitional period not only for the film industry but for Westerns specifically. For nearly forty years, Wayne had made a name for himself as the quintessential Western hero, a tough, righteous, and unflappable all-American gunman who shoots more than he speaks. In 1969, Hollywood honored Duke with its most coveted award while also welcoming a trio of “revisionist Westerns”—Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tell Them Willie Boy is Here, and The Wild Bunch—that subverted the black-and-white morality of Wayne’s filmography.

In a way, True Grit marked the end of the classic era of Westerns. Gary Cooper, William S. Hart, and Tom Mix were long gone, and Wayne and contemporaries like Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, and Jimmy Stewart were aging out of the saddle; the reigns once dominated by John Ford, Howard Hawks, and John Sturges were now in the hands of Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone, and Sam Peckinpah, who were presenting the American West with greater—and often darker—ethical complexity.

What’d He Wear?

On the Trail

I’ve seen a variety of costumes that are purported to be John Wayne’s screen-worn items from True Grit, with some instead from his reprisal of the role opposite Katharine Hepburn in Rooster Cogburn (1975) while others appear to be from neither film. (A hint: if the shirt is a taupe gray like this shirt via Heritage Auctions and iCollector, it’s likely from Rooster Cogburn.)

As partially compiled for a Bonhams “Arms & Armour” auction in December 2003, Duke’s screen-worn True Grit trail costume consists of a tan stockade jacket, light brown leather vest, slate-colored flannel shirt, pink plaid neckerchief, taupe jeans worn with suspenders and belt, cowboy boots with de rigueur spurs, black hat, and eye-patch.

Rooster sits back to enjoy a pull of whiskey against the picturesque backdrop of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains.

The tan heavyweight cotton stockade jacket was a John Wayne staple across his latter Westerns, beginning with Rio Bravo in 1959. Duke’s stockade jacket evolved over the following decade, and one of his actual True Grit screen-worn jackets was sold by Heritage Auctions in October 2011 alongside some of the actor’s other personal items. According to the listing:

This style of coat, known as a “stockade jacket,” became part of Wayne’s standard western costume for the rest of his career. It is first seen in the 1960 20th Century Fox release, North to Alaska (but with an added small pocket sewn on top of the larger left breast pocket) and then the design slightly changed to a three pocket version (which Wayne wore in three films) and then it changed again to a four pocket version (which Wayne wore in his last nine western films). It is believed that six of these “stockade jackets” were originally made: one for each of the “Chucks” [Roberson and Hayward, Wayne’s longtime stunt doubles] and four for Wayne himself.

The listing also describes the lining stamped with “American” in reference to United American Costume/American Costume Corporation, the company owned by prolific costume designer Luster Bayless who worked—both credited and uncredited—with Duke on many of his later films, starting with McLintock! (1963) up through his final movie, The Shootist (1976). Given that Mr. Bayless started his company in 1977, eight years after True Grit was released, the stamp was likely placed on the screen-used garment long after the production.

Note the matching corded fabric on the collar and inside cuffs of Rooster’s stockade jacket.

Made from a treated, heavy cotton outer shell and based on popular turn-of-the-century barn coats and hunting jackets, the four-button, thigh-length stockade jacket has a darker tan corduroy collar with long, set-in sleeves that are partially lined at the squared cuffs in a matching corded cloth, seen as Wayne wears the cuffs almost always unbuttoned and folded back to reveal this corduroy side, except for during the snowy epilogue. The shoulders are reinforced with Western-style gently pointed yokes.

At one point, Cogburn orders LeBoeuf to place it over the smoking chimney of a hideout cabin to chase out the occupants, which would leave the jacket with a considerable smell… though the rugged Rooster doesn’t seem like the type who would mind a jacket smelling like smoke.

Cogburn’s jacket has four patch pockets, two on the chest and two larger ones on the hips, all with rounded bottom corners and flaps. The marshal makes good use of his pockets to carry his provisions of salt, red pepper, and taffy as well as cartridges, “skinnin’ knife”, and the occasional pint of bourbon.

LeBoeuf isn’t quite as impressed as Rooster with Mattie’s decision to cross the river on horseback.

Brown leather vests in various colors, fabrics, and forms are another staple of John Wayne’s Western wardrobe, dating considerably further back in his filmography than the stockade jacket. The True Grit waistcoat, made by Western Costume Co., was made of light brown suede with a coarser beige linen back lining that begins under the horizontal yoke and is shaped with darts on each side.

The front of the vest is detailed with notch lapels that roll to a long single leather drawstring on each side to ostensibly tie the vest at mid-chest, rather than a dressier button-up closure. Cogburn’s vest also has four slim-welted pockets on the front. Cogburn’s six-pointed marshal’s star printed “DEPUTY | MARSHAL” was made of brushed steel (and not the proverbial tin) by LAS&S Company, according to the Bonhams listing, and and pinned to the left side of his vest.

Rooster Cogburn’s neckerchief is a light pink plaid cotton scarf, knotted on the left side and worn loosely around his neck.

The traditional John Wayne image, dating back as far as his breakout role in Stagecoach (1939) and through the 1950s, included a flap-fronted “bib” shirt. By the mid-1960s—following his 1964 surgery to treat lung cancer and around the time he made The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)—Duke had essentially replaced his cavalry-style bib shirts with more conventional button-up shirts that were likely more comfortable and flattering, not to mention easier to put on, as the actor continued to work through his middle age.

In True Grit, Rooster Cogburn hits the trail with a long-sleeved button-up work shirt in a heavyweight slate gray-blue cotton. As in his other movies of the period, the shirt was detailed with a large collar, rounded on the corners, with a front placket, two chest pockets, and single-button squared cuffs. According to the Bonhams auction listing, this shirt was custom-made by Ermenegildo Zegna and is embroidered on the lower tail seam with “68D Jeakins” in reference to costume designer Dorothy Jeakins.

Aside from a brief scene toward the end where he wears his ecru flannel work shirt with the leather vest and kerchief, Rooster exclusively wears a blue-gray shirt with this outfit, meaning that shirts of other colors purported to be screen-worn (such as this burgundy shirt and embroidered vest via Nate D. Sanders or this taupe “gray” shirt via iCollector) are likely listed inaccurately.

Rooster wears dark taupe canvas casual trousers styled similar to jeans with belt loops, curved front pocket openings, a seam across the top of the seat, and patch-style back pockets.

Rooster charges into the hideout where horse thieves Quincy (Jeremy Slate) and Moon (Dennis Hopper) have taken refuge.

Rooster’s trousers are held up with the redundant double suspension of a belt and braces, in this case the same yellow striped suspenders he wore with his “town” clothing, described below. His black leather belt closes through what has been identified as an officer’s belt buckle from the Civil War and Indian Wars era, cast in brass with an American eagle flanked by applied silver foliage. Similar belts and buckles were worn by Wayne across many of his movies, though this particular usage is consistent with Rooster Cogburn’s military service, albeit with the less-than-official Quantrill’s Raiders which fought for the Confederacy rather than the Union.

His military service also lends credence to Rooster wearing trousers with a belt, as this wouldn’t become a standard men’s practice until about a half-century later as menswear evolved during the roaring ’20s and the years immediately following World War I.

“Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!”

Rooster wears the same two-toned gun belt that was a fixture of most John Wayne Westerns across the latter half of the actor’s screen career, consisting of a “half-breed” holster mounted on a wide folded belt of distressed tan roughout cowhide, detailed with brown oiled leather cartridge loops across the back and left side—accommodating the .44-40 rounds for his revolver and rifle—and a brown ranger-style strap across the front that closes through a steel single-prong buckle.

Fastened to the right side of his belt for a clean, right-handed draw, the “half-breed” holster was so nicknamed for combining the classic “slim jim” holster with a “hidden skirt and a loop,” according to a listing at Purdy Gear. “It gives the holster a slimmer profile overall with the eye-catching appeal of the conventional skirted western holster’s loop… characterized by a wide, oval cigar band loop, a shallow, swooping recurve at the trigger guard and a throat cut that hits the top of the cylinder” Though worn in Duke’s films regardless of setting, these holsters were reportedly developed around the turn-of-the-century, bridging the transition between the straight gun belts of the late 19th century and the iconic “Buscadero” rigs that emerged leading up to World War I and were popularized in Western serials of the roaring ’20s. In addition to the Purdy holsters, Amazon also includes a “Duke’s Special” replica rig by Frontier Gunleather and America’s Gun Store offers the “Rooster Cogburn” among its many rigs.

The Purdy site also suggests that Wayne evidently encountered the original holster in New Mexico and had it replicated by Andy Anderson to wear in his famous Westerns like Hondo (1953) all the way through Rooster Cogburn, the 1975 sequel to True Grit. While this wouldn’t have been the same gun rig across all these films, the soft napped structure of the belt would lend itself nicely to fitting around Duke’s waist as his physique changed with age.

The curling at the top of Rooster’s gun belt suggests that it was made by folding a wide strip of roughout leather in half, leaving the top open to serve as an improvised money belt, if needed.

John Wayne favored boots by Lucchese, the bootmaker established in San Antonio by Italian immigrant brothers Salvatore and Joseph Lucchese. In the decades since the business was founded in 1883, Lucchese boots have been the preferred choice of actors and aviators ranging from Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Gregory Peck, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jimmy Doolittle and Frank Purdy Lahm, even crossing political aisles with presidents including Lyndon Baines Johnson and Ronald Reagan—and even British Prime Minister Tony Blair—known to wear Lucchese.

The Bonhams auction of Duke’s True Grit costume included a pair of tooled brown leather Lucchese cowboy boots as well as a pair of stainless steel Bohlin spurs with copper overlays, five-pointed aluminum rowels, and simple brown leather straps, though even the listing admits that there’s no confirmation these boots were worn on screen. These brown boots were re-auctioned by Heritage Auctions in October 2011, with the listing more definitive in its suggestion that he wore them as Rooster Cogburn. Though the screen-worn boots had looked black to me, the rounded pointed toes and the wide decorative tooling on the shafts are indicative of a match.

The vamps are decorated with the classic “bug and wrinkle” medallion stitching, which Lucchese stated in a Tweet was originally designed to help boot leather crease naturally along the foot, and the tops of the shafts are straight with over-the-top ear pulls that remain hidden on screen under Rooster’s trousers.

Rooster seeks to free himself from under his fallen horse in the heat of battle, showing off his hand-tooled Lucchese boots.

As Westerns shifted toward a greater focus on anti-heroes than outright heroes, even John Wayne followed to some extent by wearing a black hat as Rooster Cogburn. A Heritage Auctions listing for Duke’s black hat from The Comancheros (1961) suggests that he wore the same hat in True Grit, citing Herb Fagen’s 1996 book Duke, We’re Glad We Knew You in which Luster Bayless is quoted saying that the “hat [from True Grit] was the same one he used in The Comancheros and The Alamo. We just changed the block around.” Rooster’s wide-brimmed beaver felt hat is detailed with a decorative dark brown braided band over the traditional black grosgrain band at the base of its tall cattleman-style crown. Several replicas are available online via Watson Hat Shop and Western Saddle.

While many, if not most of the other elements described above could apply to several John Wayne characters, Rooster Cogburn’s most distinguishing feature was his black eye-patch, worn over the left eye that was damaged during Rooster’s Civil War service. John Wayne reportedly (and understandably) had some concerns about his ability to effectively ride, shoot, and act on horseback while wearing the patch so Henry Hathaway assuaged his concerns by providing the actor with a leather eye-patch incorporating a painted mesh gauze that would allow Wayne to still use his left eye.

A common sight on the trail with Rooster.

True Grit was John Wayne’s second film after he completed The Green Berets (1968), during which he had been gifted with a brass bracelet by the indigenous Montagnard people of Vietnam. Modern Forces Living History Group reports that many American servicemen returned from Vietnam with these bracelets from the tribe, signifying friendship or respect.

Beginning with Hellfighters, which was released in November 1968, Wayne would wear the bracelet on his right wrist in every movie—including True Grit—as well as every day off-screen, and he was reportedly buried wearing the bracelet as well.

In Town

Interestingly, Rooster’s more genteel “town” clothes for court closely resemble what Mattie’s doomed father, Frank Ross (John Pickard), was wearing the last time she saw him before he set off for Fort Smith with his eventual murderer, Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey).

Cogburn’s black brushed flannel frock coat has high-gorge peak lapels that roll over the top of three cloth-covered buttons at the waist, where a seam rings around the body of the coat with two decorative buttons on the back. The coat sleeves are roped at the shoulders and plain-cuffed with no buttons. The coat also has a single vent and straight flapped hip pockets positioned just below the waist seam.

Rather than a white dress shirt, Cogburn wears another of his flannel work shirts with a soft turndown collar, made from an ecru cloth. The long-sleeved shirt has a horizontal yoke across the front, placed about an inch above the openings of both chest pockets. As he isn’t wearing his vest, he wears his six-pointed marshal star pinned to the left pocket of his shirt. His shirt’s black plastic sew-through buttons heavily contrast agains the light cloth and coordinate with his black Western-style string bow tie.

Was Rooster quick to earn Mattie’s trust for more than just his reputation for meanness? While this sartorial approach was hardly uncommon during the era, Mattie may have subconsciously seen Rooster as a surrogate for the man whose death she was so dedicated to avenge.

Cogburn wears his same black hat, Civil War-era officer’s belt, tooled leather boots, and striped suspenders that make up part of his trail costume. Connected via brown leather hooks to buttons along the inside of his trouser waistband, the thick tan suspenders are striped with two wide yellow stripes on the outside, then two thin mint-blue stripes flanking a thin yellow stripe in the center.

The Guns

“I never shot nobody I didn’t have to!” Rooster Cogburn testifies when asked how many people he’s shot in the nearly four years he’s been a Deputy U.S. Marshal, eventually answering that he’s killed a total of 23 men in the course of stopping them in flight or defending himself. Given the dangerous nature of his “business”, it’s no surprise that Cogburn is an expert with his firearms. “Well, a gun that’s unloaded and cocked ain’t good for nothin’,” Cogburn further testifies.

Rooster Cogburn’s primary sidearm is a Colt Single Action Army with a 4¾” barrel that was often referred to as the “Civilian”, “Gunfighter”, or “Quickdraw” model, with the later two appellations certainly applying in Rooster’s case. According to IMFDB, Rooster’s revolvers had unique grips manufactured by Maurice D. Scarlac using his own material called Catalin, designed with three shallow finger grooves on the left side to fit the middle, ring, and pinky fingers of Wayne’s right hand.

“Why do you keep that one chamber empty?” Mattie asks as she watches Rooster load his Peacemaker. “So I won’t shoot my foot off,” Rooster responds with a smirk, referring to the practice of keeping only five rounds loaded in a Single Action Army with an empty round under the hammer to prevent accidental discharge should something strike the hammer.

“Mr. Rat… I have a writ here says you’re to stop eating Chen Lee’s cornmeal forthwith. Now it’s a rat writ, a writ for a rat, and this is lawful service of the same.”

Colt introduced the “New Model Army Metallic Cartridge Revolving Pistol” in October 1873 alongside the powerful .45 Long Colt cartridge, eventually offering three standard barrel lengths (7½” Cavalry, 5½” Artillery, and the 4¾” described above), though both longer- and shorter-barreled variants were also produced. Though most common, the .45 Colt cartridge was one of more than 30 caliber options that would be offered on the Single Action Army by the time production of Colt’s first generation ended in 1940 with more than 350,000 made.

Beginning in 1877, Colt began manufacturing the Colt Frontier Six-Shooter variant, chambered for the .44-40 Winchester centerfire cartridge that could allow gunmen to reduce their ammunition needs to only one type of cartridge when loading their revolvers and rifles. According to IMFDB, at least two of Wayne’s screen-used Peacemakers in True Grit were chambered for .44-40, while the third was a .45. In total, he used three in True Grit:

• Colt Single Action Army, 4¾” barrel, 44-40 WCF, rented from Stembridge
• Colt Single Action Army, 4¾” barrel, .45 LC, rented from Stembridge
• Colt Single Action Army, 4¾” barrel (converted from 5½” model with “Bisley” grips), .44-40 WCF (converted from .45 LC), personally owned by John Wayne, serial number 309795

The latter piece, Duke’s own, has an interesting story as it had originally left the Colt factory in 1893 as a .45-caliber “Bisley Model” Single Action Army, distinctive for it’s bird’s head grips. The revolver would be rebuilt with a shorter, Quickdraw-length 4¾” barrel and converted to fire .44-40 Winchester rifle cartridges not unlike the “forty-four forty Colt’s revolver” described by Charles Portis in the book. According to Phil Spangenberger in the True West Magazine article “John Wayne and the Peacemaker”, the actor obtained this revolver from a studio props department and would first use it on screen in The War Wagon (1967) through most of the Westerns he made over the decade to follow before his death. Wayne reportedly liked the Scarlac-designed grips so much that he had personally “tea-stained” them at home for the yellowed ivory finish seen on screen.

Note the unique finger grooves on the grips of Rooster’s Single Action Army, tucked into his waistband for quicker access with his left hand when charging Lucky Ned’s gang.

Charles Portis’ novel describes Rooster’s saddle gun as “a Winchester repeating rifle”, not surprisingly chambered for the same .44-40 centerfire cartridge as fired by his Colt revolver. True Grit takes this description a step further by arming John Wayne with his usual Winchester Model 1892 Saddle Ring Carbine, a shortened lever-action rifle with an enlarged lever loop so that Duke could twirl the rifle by the loop with one hand. This habit, pioneered by Wayne with stuntman Yakima Canutt during the production of Stagecoach (1939), became a trademark for not only John Wayne but also Chuck Connors on ABC’s The Rifleman. Fellow TV Western gunman Steve McQueen also carried a Model 1892 with an enlarged lever loop, though this cut-down “Mare’s Leg” with its shortened barrel and stock was actually carried as his sidearm.

Production photo of John Wayne with his well-traveled Winchester in True Grit

Though widespread in Westerns set during this era, the appearance of a Winchester Model 1892 is ultimately anachronistic, likely meant to stand in for the older model Winchester Model 1873, which shares many cosmetic similarities to the later Model ’92 and was notably nicknamed “The Gun That Won the West” for its one-time ubiquity on the Great Plains and beyond.

When it was introduced in 1892, this particular Winchester model was offered in a trio of popular centerfire calibers that could also be used for the Single Action Army revolver: .32-20, .38-40, and the venerable .44-40. By the time production ended in 1945 with more than one million Model ’92 rifles manufactured, some were also available in .25-20 Winchester and .218 Bee, though .44-40 WCF remained the most popular caliber.

Worth mentioning is that these Colts and Winchesters were popular in Hollywood productions due to their ability to use the “five-in-one” blank cartridge, so named for their cross-functionality in the .38-40, .44-40, and .45-caliber Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles frequently featured in early Westerns.

I believe at least two Winchester Model 1892 carbines were used by John Wayne in True Grit, one with a full carbine-length barrel and another modified with a slightly shorter barrel for certain action sequences. Wayne’s ability to fire the Winchester one-handed meant that he could use it and his Colt revolver akimbo when famously charging Lucky Ned’s gang on horseback while biting on the reins.

Rooster fires his Winchester one-handed.

Another weapon of note from True Grit, is the “Colt’s Dragoon” that Mattie plans on carrying to capture Tom Chaney. Having belonged to her father, the massive .44-caliber percussion revolver is actually an 1847 model Colt Walker rather than the later and only somewhat smaller Colt Model 1848 Army percussion revolver also known as the “Dragoon”. Named in honor of his collaboration with Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker of the Texas Rangers, the Walker Colt was one of the first and most powerful weapons developed by legendary gunsmith Samuel Colt as a beefed-up evolution of his .36-caliber Colt Paterson folding-trigger revolver introduced a decade earlier. Walker had wanted a repeating handgun that would be powerful at close range and this weapon delivered as the largest black powder revolver at the time. Walker charged into battle during the Mexican-American War with two of his namesake revolvers, though he died in combat during the Battle of Huamantla in October 1847, not long after Colt completed the brief run of only 1,100 original Walker Colts produced.

Chaney himself takes up the revolver after he subdues Mattie, and it falls into the snake-filled mine shaft with him. While rescuing Mattie, Rooster also retrieves the revolver on her command. She, in turn, gifts it to Rooster with the hopes that “it might keep you alive!”

“Why, by God, girl, that’s a Colt’s Dragoon! You’re no bigger than a corn nubbin, what’re you doing with all this pistol?”

Four and a half pounds while unloaded, the Colt Walker’s hefty mass was one of several issues that Colt sought to amend with his next revolver, and the Colt Model 1848 Percussion Army Revolver weighed in closer to only four pounds, still firing the deadly .44-caliber ball ammunition albeit with a slightly shorter barrel, shorter cylinder to prevent overloading, and a loading lever latch to avoid accidental jams. A favorite of the U.S. Army’s mounted infantry or “Dragoon” regiments through the Civil War, the Model 1848 Army revolver was alternatively nicknamed the “Colt Dragoon”. The dialogue of Charles Portis’ novel implies this to be Mattie Ross’ actual firearm, and the 2010 Coen brothers-directed remake also places the correct Colt in Mattie’s hands.

What to Imbibe

“Rooster Cogburn! Lord, I’ve heard some terrible things about him,” Mrs. Floyd (Edith Atwater) shares with Mattie, her latest boarder, adding that, “he loves to pull a cork, I know that!”

And does he ever.

Cogburn takes pride in swilling his drink of choice, touting the wonders of “genuine double-rectified busthead, aged in the keg!”

John Wayne as Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn in True Grit (1969)

The specific brand of Rooster’s seemingly bottomless pints of bourbon appears to be Jonathan Collier, a prop label dating back to at least the 1940s with an old-fashioned styling that has made it a standard of Western productions including, but certainly not limited to: Gunsmoke, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, 3:10 to Yuma (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958), Hang ‘Em High (1968), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Unforgiven (1992), and Deadwood.

Mattie implores him to while they’re on the trail, but he refuses, eventually drinking so much of his beloved Jonathan Collier whiskey that he tumbles from his horse.

Whiskey isn’t a surprising choice for a rugged westerner’s favored booze, and it also reflects the real John Wayne’s penchant for bourbon, specifically 101-proof Wild Turkey, drank neat, though his son Ethan clarified in a 2016 article for The Daily Beast that “if he wanted a drink, it was bourbon or tequila.”

“Conmemorativo tequila, that’s as fine a liquor as there is in the world,” Wayne himself was quoted as saying in a 1971 interview with Playboy. “Christ, I tell you it’s better than any whiskey; it’s better than any schnapps; it’s better than any drink I ever had in my life.” Sauza Conmemorativo Añejo is a 100% agave tequila that has been aged in toasted American oak casks for a smoky, woody taste and finish.

The Daily Beast‘s article also lists fine French wines, including Château Lafite Rothschild and Dom Pérignon vintage champagne, among Duke’s favorites… though it would be considerably out of character to see Rooster Cogburn popping the cork on a bottle of Dom while hot on the trail of Lucky Ned Pepper.

How to Get the Look

John Wayne as Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn in True Grit (1969)

John Wayne’s classic Western look needed little adaption to accommodate the character of Rooster Cogburn, and the actor’s staples of stockade jacket, flannel work shirt, leather vest, and cowboy hat and boots remain timeless examples of hard-wearing work attire for anyone from modern ranch hands to one-eyed marshals.

• Tan treated cotton four-button stockade jacket with corduroy collar, four flapped patch pockets, corduroy-lined single-button cuffs, and reinforced shoulders with pointed yokes
• Light brown suede vest/waistcoat with notch lapels, drawstring closure, four jetted pockets, and tan coarse linen back lining
  • Brushed steel six-pointed “Deputy Marshal” star
• Dark slate cotton long-sleeved work shirt with rounded collar, front placket, two chest pockets, and single-button cuffs
• Taupe canvas jeans with belt loops, slanted side pockets, and patch back pockets
• Tan, yellow, and light blue striped suspenders with brown leather hooks
• Black leather belt with U.S. Army officer’s brass-cast “American Eagle” belt buckle flanked by silver foliage
• Tan folded roughout leather gun belt with brown front strap (with steel single-prong buckle), brown leather cartridge loops, and brown leather “half-breed” right-side holster
• Dark brown leather Lucchese cowboy boots with decorative tooling on shafts, round pointed toes with “bug and wrinkle” medallion stitching, and slightly raised heels
• Stainless steel spurs
• Black beaver felt wide-brimmed cattleman-style cowboy hat with dark brown braided band over black grosgrain band
• Brass “Montagnard Bracelet”
• Black leather left eye-patch

Movies like True Grit immortalized John Wayne’s preferred stockade jackets and the actor’s name is often used in conjunction with marketing these coats as seen offered by The Bradford Exchange, Hammacher Schlemmer, Lucy Store, and—of course—the John Wayne Birthplace & Museum in Iowa.

I know that there are many hardcore John Wayne fans who are likely considerably more knowledgable about the actor’s wardrobe, weapons, and whiskey than I could ever hope to be, so I welcome feedback from anyone who has anything to add (or correct) about any information in this post!

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Charles Portis’ novel.

When the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum closed in response to the spreading COVID-19 pandemic in March, the museum staff placed its Twitter account in the hands of Tim, a security guard, who quickly became a social media favorite for his earnest use of the medium to promote many of the items and artifacts around the museum, including John Wayne’s costume elements playing Rooster Cogburn such as his hat, boots, and more, all part of the museum’s “Two Grits: A Peek Behind the Eyepatch” collection on loan from John Wayne Enterprises. (I recommend following @ncwhm for more #HashtagTheCowboy fun!)

The Quote

Fill your hands, you son of a bitch!

Footnote

There are some inconsistencies regarding the film’s setting, as opposed to the novel which was likely set across November and December 1878. Frank Ross’s tombstone dates his death on October 6, 1880, implying that Mattie’s adventure with Cogburn is set during the weeks to follow, though a glimpse at Mattie’s contract with Colonel Stonehill shows a date of September 1881. However, since this prop is less prominent and more prone to error than a grave, we can assume that the filmmakers intended True Grit to be set across the fall of 1880.

Gallery

Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004)

Vitals

Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, eccentric and ambitious aviation and movie mogul

Los Angeles, Summer 1935

Film: The Aviator
Release Date: December 25, 2004
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Sandy Powell

Background

Almost five years after the success of his World War I epic Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes lands his seaplane at the beach to the tune of Bing Crosby crooning the 1933 ballad “Thanks”, backed by “musical host of the coast” Jimmie Grier and his Orchestra. The graceful approach of the Sikorsky S-38 “Flying Boat” and the dapper Hughes deplaning from it dazzles the cast and crew of Sylvia Scarlett, Katharine Hepburn’s first of four films with director George Cukor and co-star Cary Grant.

“I read in the magazines that you play golf,” Hughes introduces himself to Hepburn (Cate Blanchett, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal). “On occasion,” she responds. “Well, how about nine holes?” he asks.

“Now, Mr. Hughes?”

“If it would be convenient, Miss Hepburn.”

The real Howard Hughes, dressed similarly to DiCaprio’s depiction, standing in front of his new Boeing 100A Army Pursuit Plane in Inglewood, California, during the 1940s.

What’d He Wear?

DiCaprio’s Hughes emerges from his Sikorsky seaplane in a navy double-breasted jacket and off-white trousers, a classically sophisticated seaside ensemble that balances the traditional navy reefer jacket with a summery white lower half, an increasing popular sartorial marriage among well-to-do American men during the interwar period.

Sandy Powell, whose work in The Aviator was deservedly honored with the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, was undoubtedly inspired by an outfit favored by the real Howard Hughes as seen in several photos from the early 1940s. Its elegance here no doubt contributed to elevate this brief and ultimately insignificant vignette into a memorable image from the film.

DiCaprio’s double-breasted jacket is likely navy serge, a heavy, mill-weave worsted twill cloth. The wide peak lapels have straight gorges, sweeping across his torso for a six-on-two button formation, closing with dark blue plastic sew-through buttons that lack the flashy contrast of a metal-buttoned blazer. The jacket has a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and a ventless back per the prevailing vent preferences of the era. (The one detail of his jacket that remains indiscernible to me is whether or not his cuffs are finished with three or four buttons.)

Hughes wears a businesslike white cotton shirt with a long point collar in a sharp inverted “V” shape that perfectly exemplifies this style of collar. His repp striped tie is primarily red with wide coral-colored block stripes, bordered along the top with thin periwinkle, white, and navy stripes all in the right-down-to-left traditionally American “downhill” direction.

Powell’s vision for the scene takes it to the next level of contemporary cool by dressing Hughes in a pair of vintage-inspired gold-framed sunglasses that he continues to wear when golfing with Miss Hepburn. While sunglasses were still finding a foothold among stylish men and women during this pre-war period, an aviator like Hughes would have certainly been familiar with their virtues—particularly when flying through the sunny skies over southern California—and would have been fashionably ahead of the curve. The rounded dark gray lenses recall the retro-inspired Ray-Ban RB3447 “Round Metal” sunglasses, available online from Ray-Ban and from Amazon.

Sophisticated style for a seaside summer at sunset. (Say that ten times fast.)

“It is difficult in a white suit to have the air of nonchalance that I think real good dressing requires,” the esteemed Sir Hardy Amies scribed in his 1964 volume ABCs of Men’s Fashion. “We are therefore today rather inclined to abandon the white linen jacket and merely retain the white linen trousers. There is nothing more comfortable to wear or more pleasant to see than these.”

Evidently, Hughes got the memo with the cream-colored linen trousers completing his look as he strides from his Sikorsky with considerably more nonchalance than one would evidently expect from a gent fully suited in white. These flat front trousers have an appropriate long rise to DiCaprio’s waist and are finished on the bottoms with turn-ups (cuffs).

As Hughes emerges from the cockpit, we get a quick glimpse of his waistband before he buttons the jacket and see that his trousers appear to be worn with a slim leather belt, almost certainly a dark brown leather to coordinate with his dark brown cap-toe oxfords. With outfits like this, almost any shade of shoe leather is preferable to black, which would provide an unseasonal and unattractive contrast with the near-white of his trousers. Hughes’ dark socks appear to also be a thematically appropriate brown.

Redefining runway style.

More than 60 years before DiCaprio would play F. Scott Fitzgerald’s doomed hero, Alan Ladd starred as Jay Gatsby in 1949’s The Great Gatsby, the first sound adaptation of Fitzgerald’s famous Jazz Age novel.

The fifth chapter describes Gatsby’s “white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie” for his reunion with his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, a direction that was unwaveringly followed by the costume designers who dressed Robert Redford in 1974, Toby Stephens in 2000, and DiCaprio himself in 2013. However, Edith Head went a more practical route than Fitz prescribed for Ladd’s Gatsby, dressing him in a dark navy double-breasted blazer, white shirt, striped tie, and white flannel slacks.

Ladd’s Gatsby takes a moment of solitude in his navy blazer and white trousers. His affectations of pocket square and spectator shoes would have been uncharacteristic for DiCaprio’s Hughes but fine additions to this particular outfit.

Aside from Ladd’s spectator shoes, it’s nearly identical to how Sandy Powell would dress DiCaprio for Hughes’ majestic arrival by seaplane on a southern California beach. Powell’s costume design for the scene was almost certainly inspired by an actual outfit worn by the real Hughes (as mentioned and illustrated above), but I found the Gatsby similarities interesting given that DiCaprio would eventually play the famous romantic of the roaring ’20s himself.

How to Get the Look

Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004)

“With blue and white as the imperatives of nautical dress, navy blazers and white trousers made a dashing sports outfit for the wealthy American man of the 1920s,” writes Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man.

If anyone embodied American wealth during the interwar era, it was Howard Hughes, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal channels the real-life aviator’s fashion sense as he stylishly deplanes in a navy double-breasted jacket and off-white slacks, completing his suave look with striped tie and retro-inspired sunglasses for good measure.

• Navy wool serge double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and ventless back
• White cotton shirt with point collar and button cuffs
• Red-and-coral “downhill”-striped repp tie
• Cream linen flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Dark brown slim leather belt
• Dark brown leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Dark brown socks
• Gold-framed vintage-inspired sunglasses with rounded lenses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Clint Eastwood as Blondie, aka “the Man with No Name”, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Vitals

Clint Eastwood as Blondie, aka “the Man with No Name”, taciturn bounty hunter

New Mexico Territory, Spring 1862

Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
(Italian title: Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo)
Release Date: December 23, 1966
Director: Sergio Leone
Costume Designer: Carlo Simi

Background

Today marks the 90th birthday of screen legend Clint Eastwood, born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco. (Between John Wayne on May 26, James Stewart on May 20, and Gary Cooper on May 7, there must be something about being in born in May that positions an actor for stardom in the Western genre!)

After Eastwood’s initial success on the TV series Rawhide, he traveled to Italy to star in a trio of Westerns directed by Sergio Leone, firmly establishing the significance of the “spaghetti Western”. In A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), Eastwood ostensibly played a variation of the same mysterious, laconic gunfighter alternately known as Joe, Manco, or Blondie, respectively, but immortalized in cinema as “the Man with No Name.”

Both A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More are excellent, but the third time was the charm with this final entry in Leone’s unofficial “Dollars trilogy”, proving the art of his craft between screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni’s shared vision with Leone, Carlo Simi’s genre-defining production and costume design, Tonino Delli Colli’s breathtaking cinematography, and Ennio Morricone’s sweeping and often haunting score. On the latter note, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly boasts one of the greatest soundtracks of all time from its famous title track through memorable tracks like “Il Forte (The Strong)”, “Fine Di Una Spia (Fine of a Spy)”, and “Il Triello (The Trio)” to the epic “L’estasi Dell’oro (The Ecstasy of Gold)” that became a standard of Metallica concerts and has even been featured in commercials for entities from Nike and Dolce & Gabbana to L.L. Bean and KFC.

Leone developed an unofficial troupe of cast and crew that followed through the trio, particularly the latter two as A Fistful of Dollars was essentially a Western-set adaptation of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Eastwood led the cast, which always included Mario Brega, Lorenzo Robledo, Aldo Sambrell, and Benito Stefanelli in various roles. Following his layered performance as the flawed but heroic Colonel Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More, Lee Van Cleef returned as a sinister mercenary killer who would be the “bad” to Eastwood’s “good”. Filling the role of “the ugly” was Eli Wallach in a memorably manic performance as the wily bandit Tuco Benedicto Pacífico Juan María Ramírez, whose larceny kicks off our greed-driven adventure against the backdrop of the New Mexico Campaign during the early months of the American Civil War, reconstructed with the guidance of Matthew Brady’s celebrated wartime photography for added verisimilitude.

Despite lukewarm contemporary reception, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and its spaghetti Western predecessors have gained a remarkable reputation over the years not only as some of the greatest Westerns but, particularly in the case of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, among the best and most influential movies ever made.

What’d He Wear?

One of the earliest requests I received was to write about Clint Eastwood’s “genteel” off-white coat in this movie (and I offer my sincerest apologies to BAMF Style reader Jack for the nearly seven-year delay in getting around to this!), so I’ll keep the focus of this post to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, which credits its costumes in the opening titles to Carlo Simi’s design and sourcing from Western Costume Company and Antonelli. As this is a prequel of sorts for the ageless “man with no name”, we see how his wardrobe evolves as he obtains the garments that Clint Eastwood would also wear in those first two movies.

The Frock Coat: Prologue

It isn’t until nearly twenty minutes of screen-time have passed, including that famous first ten-and-a-half minutes that passes without a single word of dialogue, that we first meet the closest thing The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly offers to a hero, the laconic gunman that Tuco calls “Blondie”. Despite his taciturn reputation, we hear Blondie before we see him as he threatens three fellow bounty hunters off-camera before stepping, hat-first, into the frame.

Said “plantation hat” appears to be well-traveled, made of natural straw with a very wide brim that curls up at the ends and would provide ample protection from the hot New Mexico sun… leading Tuco to shoot it off of Blondie’s head during the desert death march. The hat has a low telescope-shaped crown, banded with six long strips of tan leather looped intermittently around the base of the crown.

Peering out from under his broad-brimmed straw plantation hat, Blondie sets the terms of his tenuous partnership with Tuco.

Long before adopting his famous poncho, the Man with No Name steps into the frame with his first choice of “badass longcoat”, an olive-tinted beige frock coat with what appear to be hand pockets but are, in fact, long slits cut through the sides for our hero to more efficiently access his holstered Colt. These echo the slanted slits on each side of the chest, which may be actual pockets.

The knee-length coat has a long single vent that extends up to the high, suppressed waist line, decorated on the back with two cloth-covered buttons that match those on the front and the non-functioning three buttons on each cuff.

As Blondie approaches Tuco in their shared introductory scene, note the butt of Blondie’s holstered revolver jutting through the slit in the right side of his frock coat.

In lore of the American west, long coats and dusters are often associated with the world of bandits, bounty hunters, and badge-wearing marshals. A bounty hunter himself, Blondie wears this sandy frock coat as he executes his catch-and-release gambit with Tuco until one close call—missing Tuco’s rope on the first shot as he had threatened to do—has Blondie rethinking his future with the “sawed-off runt”, leaving Tuco alone in the desert with nothing but a rope and plenty of threatening ire against the “filthy, double-crossing bastard” who abandoned him.

Blondie’s worn frock coat, suggested to be as well-traveled as his hat, is double-breasted with eight cloth-covered buttons, configured with parallel columns of four closely spaced buttons on each side of the front, though the top few buttons on each side are covered by the coat’s Ulster-style peak lapels with straight gorges.

Blondie regards his latest bounty, a seething Tuco, before accepting $2,000 for bringing the irate bandit to be hanged.

When a vengeful Tuco sends his spur-jangling gunmen after Blondie, our protagonist is in the midst of cleaning his Colt in a Santa Fe hotel room while General Sipley leads his rebel troops on a loud retreat outside. Sans hat, coat, and gat, this is the most that Blondie has ever been exposed to us yet, so it’s no surprise that he’s caught off-guard—at least off his guard enough to let Tuco get the drop on him after Blondie guns down his three cohorts: “There are two kinds of spurs, my friend. Those that come in by the door, and those that come in by the window.”

Gun in hand, Blondie regards the trio of freshly killed gunmen whose jangling spurs outside his hotel room door alerted him to their presence.

Blondie adds to this outfit with a long black lightweight scarf, tied into a substantial knot in front of his neck with the rest of the scarf hanging free outside his shirt. This is the next piece of his wardrobe that Blondie loses, pulling it off after Tuco forces him through a death march in the intense sun-baked heat of the New Mexico desert.

It’s during this desert death march that we get a better look at Blondie’s shirt, a busy but balanced pattern against a dark blue field. The pattern is arranged against a grid of white dots, each creating the corner of an ostensible square in which each of the two patterns alternate. One of these two patterns is a solid dark blue circle set against a “burst” of white micro-dots; the second pattern is more subtle, consisting of a square turned 45° and made up of two dotted borders, one enclosing the other, with a vertical dotted line through the center, bisecting a white dot directly in the center of this square-within-a-square.

The pattern of the shirt is similar to those increasingly popular with trend-setters of the 1960s, though the old-fashioned cut establishes it as a period-inspired piece. Blondie’s button-up shirt has a squared standing collar with a single-button neck closure, puffy full-fitting sleeves worn off the shoulders with a single-button squared cuff at the end of each, and two box-pleated chest pockets that each button through a pointed flap.

Blondie, moments away from potentially meeting his maker in the middle of the New Mexico desert. At least Tuco let him keep his shirt.

For the greater part of the 20th century, Westerns were more about storytelling than historical accuracy, and many are presented without giving a specific year—or even decade—for the on-screen action, instead relying on the lore of the old west to contextualize its action. Regardless of intended setting, silver screen gunslingers charged into battle with Winchester rifles touted as “the gun that won the west” or Peacemaker Colts drawn from buscadero holsters.

One of the most common costume anachronisms of Westerns are the seeming ubiquity of trousers with modern-style belt loops. While trouser belt loops weren’t unheard of in the 1860s, they were still far from common and it would be another half-century until they would be more integrated on men’s trousers in the years following World War I, gaining greater traction with the lowering of trouser waistlines across the roaring ’20s and Great Depression. For additional history of men’s trouser belt loops in a Western context, read Marshall Trimble’s entry for True West magazine that concludes “cowboys either wore suspenders of had a pair tight enough around the waist they didn’t need a belt to hold them up.”

All that to say, the Man with No Name wears trousers more contemporary to the 1960s production than the 1860s setting in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. His first pair of trousers are brown flat front trousers with a modern low rise and tall belt loops, through which he wears a wide and brown leather belt with some hard-worn damage and patina, fastened through a squared brass single-prong buckle. The two jetted front pockets are gently slanted.

Blondie reholsters his Colt, not yet aware that his greatest danger is silently perched a few feet behind him.

Eastwood wears a gun belt patterned after what he wore in the first two “Dollars” movies, originally made for him by Andy Anderson. (I’ve seen it mentioned that Eastwood wore the same rig on Rawhide, but I haven’t been able to find any documentation positively supporting this theory.) The rig consists of a wide brown roughout leather belt, contrast stitched in beige along the edges and with fancy double loop-and-diamond designs flanking the tapered center strap which closes through a large hammered brass single-prong buckle. The gun belt is detailed with brown leather cartridge loops around the left side onto the back, and the straight side-draw holster itself is attached to the right side of the belt with a belted strap around the center.

Replicas of Eastwood’s famous gun belt are widely available for a range of budgets, including El Paso Saddlery (via OldTradingPost.com), Escort Western Gunleather, Frontier Gunleather, Larry Green Productions, The Last Best West, LondonJacks (via Etsy), and StraightLine (via Amazon and StraightLine).

Eastwood wears the same cowboy boots that he wore as Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, though the color cinematography of Leone’s “Dollars trilogy” allowed viewers to see the rich medium tan color of the roughout cowhide for the first time. These square-toed boots have slanted heels approximately 1¼” or 1½” high.

With Bill Carson dead behind him, Tuco makes an effort to hydrate his enemy-turned-friend Blondie.

Even off of his horse, Blondie appoints his trademark boots with his usual stainless steel spurs, fastened around each boot via slim brown leather belted strap. (StraightLine produces replicas of the Man with No Name’s boots and spurs among its many reproductions of Eastwood’s costume, available via Amazon or the StraightLine site.)

Over the first half of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Blondie wears his trousers tucked into his boots, showing more of the boot shafts than the previous two films .

When a CSA wagon rolling past them interrupts Blondie’s near-execution, Tuco learns from a dying Bill Carson that $200,000 in gold is buried under a grave in Sad Hill Cemetery… though only Blondie gets to learn the name on the grave before Carson expires. In that moment, Blondie transforms from Tuco’s mortal enemy to his most valuable friend. Tuco steals Corporal Carson’s CSA uniform and eye-patch and dresses Blondie in the gray garb of another dead soldier as they set off in search of medical help… and an easy payout.

Hardly the pride of the Confederacy, Blondie and Tuco’s latest gambit lands them among bona fide rebels in a Union prison camp, ruthlessly run by Corporal Wallace (Mario Brega) and the newly ordained Sergeant “Angel Eyes” (Lee Van Cleef).

Building an Iconic Look

“The war’s over for you,” Angel Eyes greets Blondie upon his arrival in the Union prison camp headquarters, tossing him a bundle of civilian clothing as well as his old gun belt and snake-gripped Colt. “Put those clothes on.” And with that, the Good and the Bad set out in search of $200,000 in gold without the Ugly to slow them down.

Blondie begins discarding the pieces of his purloined Confederate uniform as he looks over the bundle of civilian duds lent by Angel Eyes.

We now see the familiar elements of Blondie’s wardrobe coming together like his blue-and-white railroad-striped shirt, its stripe so named for the thin striping similar to the durable pillow-ticked stripe associated with rail conductors’ caps and overalls. This particular pattern and puckering process would be popularized on seersucker cloth, though the striping on Eastwood’s shirt is thinner than that associated associated with traditional seersucker. (StraightLine markets a replica available via Amazon, though work shirts in this stripe are also popular as offered by Key Industries and Liberty Blues.)

Blondie’s striped work shirt has a front placket, single-button barrel cuffs, and a soft spread collar with rounded ends similar to the far more formal “club collar”. Rather than the billowing scarf he had worn with his last outfit, Blondie protects his neck and catches sweat with a black cotton kerchief tied in a taut strip around his neck.

Blondie now finds himself ensconced among Union troops.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly also establishes this bundle as the source of the Man with No Name’s distressed sheepskin vest, a simple one-piece waistcoat that fastens with a single thin leather draw-cord that ties over the stomach. In this case, sheepskin is exactly what you’d expect of the word, with the outer “shell” of Eastwood’s vest being the tan soft leather side of the skin, lined with the fleecy piled wool that’s also seen on the garment’s de facto collar created by the top folding over onto the chest.

“It’s for you.”

Earlier, I mentioned the anachronistic misrepresentation of belt-looped trousers in Westerns, which extends to the dark jeans that Eastwood wore across all three films in the “Dollars trilogy”. Even the earliest jeans, developed following Levi Strauss & Co.’s 1873 patent, share little in common with the modern jeans worn by the Man with No Name with their low rise, straight fit, dual back pockets, and belt loops, a feature which Levi’s wouldn’t offer with their signature 501 “waist overalls” until 1922, and then only as an option to supplement the suspender buttons and cinch-back strap, neither of which appear to be visible on Eastwood’s pants. (The suspender buttons would finally be removed the following decade, and the increasingly unpopular back cinch would remain until World War II.)

While I’m not aware of any verification that Eastwood wore Wrangler jeans in any of these movies, the North Carolina-based denim outfitter capitalized on A Fistful of Dollars‘ popularity during a contemporary U.K. campaign advertising that “He-men wear Wrangler jeans” next to a drawing of the “Man with No Name” in his signature poncho and hat, single-action revolver in hand, and a promo urging its constituents to see the film at their local cinema.

Eastwood had reportedly purchased his screen-worn jeans from a Hollywood Boulevard sporting goods shop before the production of A Fistful of Dollars. The color is a deep indigo, so dark as to almost appear black, with even the stitching dyed to match the rest of the jeans’ cotton twill fabric.

Blondie keeps his gun hand steady and ready while facing down Angel Eyes and Tuco during the film’s famous finale.

Blondie’s belt, gun rig, and boots are the only items from his first outfit to be worn again for the second half of the film which retroactively establishes his character’s look for A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. In this case, he wears the straight legs of his jeans over the top of his boot shafts, breaking just above his spur straps.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly retroactively “introduces” the Man with No Name’s chosen headgear to replace the discarded plantation hat from the first half, a brown felt cowboy hat with an asymmetrical self-bound brim and a distressed telescope crown, accented around the base with a dark brown tooled leather band that tapers to a silver-toned single-prong buckle worn on the left side.

Interestingly, the hat appears to have already withstood the bullet-ridden damage of being shot front and center through the top of the crown by Colonel Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More. Clint had reportedly purchased his from a Santa Monica wardrobe firm prior to A Fistful of Dollars and, while the maker of the original hat isn’t confirmed today, Baron Hats makes a worthy reproduction available in rabbit or beaver felt with a 4 1/8″ pencil-rolled brim and a 4½”-tall crown, and Knudsen Hat Company makes a beaver felt hat with a 3½”-wide brim and 4¼”-tall slightly pinched crown.

One piece from Angel Eyes’ bundle that doesn’t make it past The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a tattered beige lightweight duster which, for good reason, is one of the less celebrated costume pieces of the Man with No Name’s wardrobe. The somewhat oversized knee-length duster has a double-breasted front with parallel columns of five buttons on each side of the front in addition to slanted chest pockets and large hip pockets with flaps tucked in. The broad sueded collar with its unevenly jagged edges extends out to Eastwood’s shoulders, likely not the intended final form but adding to Blondie’s scrappy look. The duster has a single vent, wide waist loops for a long-gone belt, and a bloodied hole in the back of the right sleeve that suggests the previous owner met a grisly end…no doubt making it easier to yield his coat to Angel Eyes or whomever had brought about the man’s demise.

To accommodate the duster’s excessive size, Blondie folds back the cuffs at the end of each sleeve, revealing a beige-on-brown striped lining inside the sleeves that differs from the gray plaid lining inside the body of the coat.

New “enlistees” Blondie and Tuco are given a grand tour of the Union encampment by the drunken captain (Aldo Giuffrè).

Blondie wears the duster until his and Tuco’s afternoon of volunteer service with the Union Army involves them in a dangerous battle and a subsequent bridge demolition. He removes the half-drenched duster to cover a dying rebel soldier, with whom he shares one of his small cigars. After the soldier dies, Blondie spots something next to him that proves to be of considerable interest…

The Poncho

Just before the film’s final act, Blondie completes his sartorial puzzle when he finds what would become his trademark poncho next to the soldier who dies smoking one of his cigars. As written by Olivia Stalker for Polychrome, “his poncho becomes emblematic of a superhero’s cape, and cements his role as the ‘Good’.”

We’re first presented with the memorable hero shot of Blondie wearing the poncho after Tuco, overcome by the ecstasy of gold, is ferociously digging into Arch Stanton’s recently buried grave. To make the job easier, a shovel lands next to him in the dirt. He casts a sideways glance at his benefactor, and we pan up with Tuco from those familiar tan leather boots and dark jeans to find Eastwood standing, confident as ever in his newly acquired poncho as he picks at one of his little cigars.

The olive woven wool poncho is designed with a two-sided border print in the same off-white yarn as used for the design through the rest of the pullover garment, including the dense latticework around the center neck hole. The front and back are finished with a long off-white fringe.

Evidently, the poncho’s original color was sun-aged to what looked more brown on screen, though the original olive green can still be observed on the reverse side, best seen when Eastwood tosses part of the poncho over his shoulder in anticipation of the climactic final gunfight.

With his hat, poncho, and cigar, the Man with No Name completes his image.

Eastwood has taken credit for the renowned poncho, though there are conflicting stories about its origin. According to Clint Collection, he may have picked it up in a Hollywood costume store or in a Spanish shop prior to the production of a A Fistful of Dollars, having stopped in to buy more cigarillos. The latter rings of apocrypha, and some have suggested that it wasn’t even Eastwood but rather Leone and costume designer Carlo Simi who made that fateful visit to a local town store in Spain. Only Eastwood, Leone, or Simi would know for sure, though one part of the poncho’s lore that has been widely confirmed is that the same garment was worn across all three movies without being replaced or cleaned.

Of all the replicas available across the internet, the most official seems to be this 100% wool offering from the appropriately named Clint Collection, which includes plenty in its online listing including a history of the poncho, citing its origination among indigenous dwellers in the Andes region in South America who developed this blanket-like outerwear as protection from rain and wind. GuidesMag has also put considerable work into researching and ranking the seven best replicas of the famous Eastwood poncho.

The Guns

Every gun makes its own tune.

Eastwood had carried a snake-gripped Single Action Army that he brought with him from Rawhide in the first two films of the “Dollars Trilogy” but the Civil War-era setting of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly had the production team arm Blondie with a more period-appropriate sidearm than the Colt “Peacemaker” that was first introduced in 1873.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly kept a classic Colt military revolver in his holster, reverted to a Colt 1851 Navy as was popularly carried by soldiers and officers on both sides of the Civil War. Different variations of the Navy Colt were carried by all three of the titular leads, with Blondie’s revolver retaining the character’s distinctive grips boasting a silver-inlaid coiled rattlesnake on each grip panel.

Blondie: “One, two, three, four, five, six. Six. Perfect number.”
Angel Eyes: “Isn’t three the perfect number?”
Blondie: “Yeah, but I got six more bullets in my gun.”

In the fifteen years after Samuel Colt had changed firearms forever with his introduction of the Colt Paterson folding-trigger percussion revolver, the Connecticut-born inventor found success after success with the massive Walker Colt and the Colt Model 1848 “Dragoon”, both chambered for the dangerously powerful .44 ball, as well as the smaller .31-caliber “Pocket” percussion revolvers, which—despite their nomenclature—are considerably larger and heavier than most full-sized service revolvers produced over the course of the 20th century. To bridge the gap in size and power, Colt introduced this Colt Revolving Belt Pistol of Naval Caliber in 1850, with Waterman Ormsby’s engraving of the Second Texas Navy’s victory at the Battle of Campeche etched on the cylinders, added to recognize Colt’s appreciation for the Texas Navy’s early adoption of the Colt Paterson.

As its full designation suggests, the new Navy Colt could be comfortably carried in one’s belt and fired an 80-grain .36-caliber lead ball similar in power to the modern .380 cartridge. Due to its balance of portability and power, not to mention its sturdy reliability, the 1851 Colt Navy became a popular sidearm for reputable gunfighters including “Doc” Holliday and “Wild Bill” Hickok, who famously carried two ivory-gripped Navy Colts butt-first around his waist.

Blondie quickly draws and fires his Navy Colt through a slit in the side “pocket” of his frock coat, dispatching several rival bounty hunters in seconds.

All of these early American revolvers, including the .44-caliber 1860 Army Colt developed just before the Civil War began, was loaded by the then-ubiquitous procedure of pouring gunpowder into each cylinder mouth, pushing in a ball, and affixing a percussion cap to the back of the cylinder; even the most reliable revolvers thus took considerable time and skill to reload. After gunsmith Rollin White left Colt’s employ at the end of 1854, he quickly set to work developing a revolver cylinder that would allow paper cartridges to be loaded from the back of a revolver’s cylinder, similar to the cartridge revolvers popular in Europe at the time. Though elements of his design were unworkable and resulted in only one item built to his specifications (which disastrously malfunctioned), elements of his patent proved useful to Smith & Wesson, who signed their exclusive rights to parts of White’s patent into what would become a 14-year monopoly on breech-loading revolvers like the .32 rimfire Smith & Wesson Model 1.

While other firearms manufacturers violated the patent before its expiration (and were often courted by lawsuits from both White and Smith & Wesson), Colt patiently waited until the April 3, 1869, expiration date and then swiftly incorporated cartridge-firing cylinders into its own established designs via the Richards-Mason conversion process (named after Colt employees Charles Richards and William Mason), converting .36 cap-and-ball Colts to fire a .38 rimfire or centerfire cartridge with the help of a cylinder filler ring and changing out the loading lever for a spring-loaded ejector rod assembly. (For more detail about these conversions, check out College Hill Arsenal.)

Colt soon introduced its own “Open Top” revolver that fired .44 Henry rimfire cartridges, though this was followed by (and all-but forgotten in favor of) the iconic .45-caliber Colt Single Action Army in 1873. The Peacemaker, with its variety of barrel lengths and at least thirty different cartridge options over decades of production, would soon become ubiquitous in the West as well as cultural depictions of it.

The Peacemaker’s compatibility with the “five-in-one” blank cartridges favored in early Hollywood productions made it a mainstay of Western movies and TV productions across the first half of the 20th century, including Rawhide, where Clint Eastwood’s Rowdy Yates carried a 5½”-barreled “Artillery” model Single Action Army with a color case-hardened frame and silver snake-inlaid grip panels, acquired in-universe from a dead outlaw. I believe it was budgetary reasons that resulted in Eastwood bringing his Rawhide revolver and boots to A Fistful of Dollars, but these soon became an established part of the Man with No Name’s image and the same revolver appeared again in For a Few Dollars More.

The Man with No Name loads his snake-gripped Single Action Army in For a Few Dollars More, the only installment of the “Dollars trilogy” where Eastwood also wore this long brown leather lace-up shooting cuff on his right forearm, reportedly inspired by an item that Sergio Leone saw Andy Anderson wearing to accommodate a shrapnel wound from World War II.

Blondie’s Navy Colt in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly still retains the loading gate and the profile of an original percussion version, though it’s clearly been modified to fire cartridges as have the percussion revolvers brandished by all of the film’s leads.

Apropos the Italian production of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, all of the screen-featured firearms were provided by Aldo Uberti, Inc. The experts at IMFDB identified that Eastwood’s screen-used “Colt 1851 Navy” was, in fact, a unique factory cartridge-firing evolution of the original percussion revolver, created by Uberti by “specially machining some raw forgings to become .38 centerfires.”

Blondie cleans his unloaded Navy Colt, which has been anachronistically converted to fire cartridges. (Had it not, Blondie likely would have been cornered and killed by Tuco’s gunmen before managing to reassemble and reload his revolver.)

Much as Blondie’s sidearm is mostly period-accurate, the filmmakers made the same effort to represent authenticity with his long arms. In the early scene where Blondie keeps up his end of the bargain with Tuco by rescuing him from hanging, our protagonist shoulders what appears to be a Henry rifle. This innovative lever-action rifle that could quickly spit out up to sixteen or seventeen .44-caliber rimfire rounds was first fielded by Union troops in 1862 and would soon distinguish itself in combat, surprising Confederate soldiers during to the extent that CSA Colonel John S. Mosby reportedly described the weapon as “that damned Yankee rifle that can be loaded on Sunday and fired all week.” The Henry would notably distinguish itself in Union service at the Second Battle of Collierville, the Battle of Allatoona Pass, and the Battle of Franklin, though the U.S. Army itself would fall to the destructive power of the Henry rifle when in the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne warriors during the infamous Battle of the Little Bighorn. More than 14,000 rifles would be manufactured by the time production ceased in 1866.

Representing the Henry rifle on screen, the filmmakers armed Blondie with a modified Winchester Model 1866 lever-action rifle, a model nicknamed the “Yellow Boy” for the brassy shine of its alloy receiver.

Note the loading gate on the right side of the brass receiver, indicating that Blondie’s rifle is the anachronistic Winchester Model 1866. You can also see the top of his side-mounted scope as he takes careful aim to cut down Tuco’s rope.

The use of a Yellow Boy would have been anachronistic for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly‘s Civil War setting, so it was made to resemble a Henry by removing the Winchester’s wooden fore-end, though it retains the loading gate which had been added to the right side of the Winchester’s frame as part of Nelson King’s patent designed to improve upon some of the original Henry’s flaws. Both the Henry and the original Winchester Model 1866 were chambered for the rimfire .44 Henry cartridge. The popular Winchester Model 1866 remained in production through 1899, even after Winchester Repeating Arms introduced several variants of its lever-action repeating rifle like “The Gun That Won the West” Model 1873, the Model 1892, and the Model 1895 that would be a favorite of Teddy Roosevelt.

To achieve the startling accuracy required to shoot and break the rope being used to hold Tuco and then pick off his pursuers, Blondie appoints his Henry/Winchester hybrid with a long side-folding scope along the left side of the rifle’s frame.

Blondie and his converted Winchester rifle (with the wooden fore-end removed to resemble a Henry) are now in the service of a doomed outlaw named Shorty. This shot of the left side shows more of the scope.

By the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Blondie again aims a rifle at Tuco while the latter is suspended from a rope, though it is a different model than seen earlier. A recent update to IMFDB suggests that this isn’t an anachronistic Sharps 1874 rifle as previously thought but instead a Spencer repeating rifle with an octagonal barrel, citing Peter J. Hanley’s The Making of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as the source.

The same correction suggests that this was likely meant to be Blondie’s rifle all along, as it’s seen with a scope on his horse during the Rome-filmed scene where Blondie brings Tuco into town and dismounts his horse prior to the Spanish-filmed hanging scene. Per the IMFDB entry, “Some technical difficulty must have caused the crew to abandon this rifle, substituting the bounty hunter’s Model 1866 which later received the scope at the time of the second hanging. Certainly, the Spencer could never have fired with the rapid cadence of the Model 1866.”

The full-length octagonal barrel seen in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly indicates that Blondie’s Spencer is a civilian sporting model, possibly fitted with a barrel made by J. Harder & Sons of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, like this 30″-barreled Spencer (via Rock Island Auction Company). The suggestion of Blondie’s rifle being a Spencer rather than Sharps is supported by the evidence cited a decade earlier in this CASCity.com forum.

The IMFDB writer also states that the placement of Eastwood’s arm during the scene prevents the viewer from recognizing the “breechblock pivot area” that would distinguish the Spencer from the Sharps.

Invented by Christopher Spencer, the Spencer repeating rifle has been described as the world’s first military metallic cartridge repeating rifle, patented in March 1860 just months before the Henry. The weapon was swiftly adopted by the U.S. Navy, then the Army—where the shorter-length carbines were particularly popular among cavalry troops like George Armstrong Custer—though it never replaced the muzzle-loading rifled musket in standard service despite Abraham Lincoln being impressed by a personal demonstration of the Spencer in action. (Interestingly, Lincoln’s eventual killer John Wilkes Booth would be armed with a Spencer carbine when he was finally captured.)

The standard ammunition was the proprietary .56-56 Spencer black powder cartridge, fed from a seven-round magazine, with more than 200,000 rifles and carbines produced over the decade before production ended when the company went out of business in 1869.

Of course, when Blondie needs true firepower that even a state-of-the-art rifle can’t manage, he turns to a strategically placed Civil War-era howitzer, in this case a single-barreled cannon with an octagonal muzzle.

Watch out, Tuco.

What to Imbibe

Unlike many Western heroes, Clint Eastwood’s nameless gunman doesn’t fuel himself on countless shots of anonymous whiskey slapped on the bar by a no-nonsense saloonkeeper but rather his signature cigarillos, smoked from the left corner of his mouth. I’ve seen various brands touted as Eastwood’s on-screen smokes, including Marsh Wheeling Virginians (suggested in an interview with the actor himself) or Toscano-made Parodi Ammezzati cheroots made of fermented Kentucky tobacco, but the answer may be lost to history unless we can get some definitive clarification from Eastwood or a surviving member of the production team.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em. And Blondie’s got plenty.

What is less in question is the fact that Eastwood—already a non-smoker—grew to detest the taste of his small cigars, even though the harsh taste and effects would put him in the proper mood for the role. According to Eli Wallach, Eastwood once quipped to Leone after multiple takes of a shot that featured him smoking: “You’d better get it this time, because I’m going to throw up.” No wonder Eastwood developed a directorial style famous for single takes.

How to Get the Look

Clint Eastwood as Blondie, aka “the Man with No Name”, in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

In addition to the movie itself, Clint Eastwood’s outfit as the poncho-wearing “man with no name” who lets his ubiquitous cigarillo and Colt do his talking for him has become influential and iconic in its own right.

• Blue-and-white railroad-striped cotton shirt with rounded spread collar, front placket, button-through patch chest pockets, and button cuffs
• Black cotton neckerchief
• Tan sheepskin vest with natural piled lining and mid-chest drawcord
• Olive woven wool poncho with white pattern and white fringe
• Dark indigo cotton twill straight-leg jeans with belt loops, five-pocket layout, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown leather wide belt with squared gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Brown roughout leather gun belt with contrast edge-stitching and loop-and-diamond detail stitching, with tapered front strap (with hammered brass single-prong buckle), cartridge loops, and straight right-side holster (with belted strap)
• Tan roughout cowhide square-toed cowboy boots with straight shaft openings and low slanted heels
• Stainless steel spurs with slim brown leather belted strap
• Brown felt cowboy hat with telescope crown and dark brown tooled leather band (with silver-toned single-prong buckle)

Elements of Blondie’s wardrobe are widely available with replicas of varying qualities offered, whether you’re looking to complete a Western-style outfit or build a Halloween costume like Clint’s own son, Scott Eastwood, memorably did.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie or the whole “Dollars trilogy”.

You can also shop around for your own “man with no name” costume with this helpful guide.

The Quote

You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

Sidney Poitier as Dr. Matt Younger in A Warm December (1973)

Vitals

Sidney Poitier as Matt Younger, widowed father and clinic physician

London, Summer 1972

Film: A Warm December
Release Date: May 23, 1973
Director: Sidney Poitier
Wardrobe Supervisor: John Wilson-Apperson

Background

Despite its title, Sidney Poitier’s second directorial effort A Warm December is actually set during a summer in London. (The title is contextualized during one of the film’s final scenes, so I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it!) Poitier plays Dr. Matt Younger, a recent widow who brings his daughter across the pond for what he hopes to be a mindless vacation spent riding his motorbike until he makes the acquaintance of the mysterious and magnetic Catherine (Ester Anderson) and falls for her.

A physician in a Washington clinic, Matt soon recognizes the symptoms of sickle cell anemia in Catherine, confirmed after she undergoes an evaluation with the help of his fellow doctor pal Henry (George Baker). With the truth out between them, Matt proposes that Catherine marry him and join him and his daughter Stefanie in the United States.

What’d He Wear?

A Warm December‘s sole costume credit recognizes John Wilson-Apperson, who had also been credited as the wardrobe supervisor for To Sir, With Love, again starring Sidney Poitier as an American in London. Poitier had established himself as a style icon with movies like To Sir, With Love, in which he display his mastery of classic menswear staples like a navy odd jacket and gray slacks and the classic gray business suit.

Half a decade later, the early 1970s saw not only an expansion of lapel widths but also a general expansion in the range of colors, cuts, details, and patterns available for men’s closets, illustrated by Sidney Poitier’s wide-ranging wardrobe in A Warm December.  Matt Younger’s wardrobe includes the requisite navy blazer, camel sports coat, and gray lounge suit, but the good doctor’s sartorial creativity reaches its apex with this sporty, unconventional suit and open-necked shirt that both experiment with unique patterns and details.

Note the low-contrast diamond-grid pattern and how it shines differently under different lighting conditions.

Worn for this scene alone, Matt’s suit appears to be constructed from a double-knit polyester, a newly fashionable fabric in the 1970s that allowed for more creative patterns like this particular suiting that appears to be a low-contrast old gold diamond grid on a stone-colored ground.

The single-breasted jacket has fashionably wide notch lapels that roll gently over the top of the the three closely spaced buttons, with the lapels and pocket flaps detailed with sporty welted edges. The jacket is roped at the sleeveheads, and each sleeve is finished with three buttons at the cuff. The jacket’s long double vents are also contemporary with early 1970s trends.

Aside from the suiting itself, the most creative aspect of the jacket’s design is the breast pocket, not only for being set-in and flapped but also dramatically angled downward to echo the slanted equestrian-style hacking pockets on the hips. The military-inspired detail of breast pocket flaps was making a gradual return on sportier suits over the late 1960s and through the ’70s, approximately a half-century after they had been an element of Edwardian menswear.

Matt begins his day wearing a brick-shaded brown silk tie that he removes when he returns to his hotel room and doesn’t put on again when taking Catherine back to see Henry.

James Bond fans may recognize Matt’s pal Henry played by George Baker, who had the brief but notable role as Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

While some may counter a flashy suit like this with a subdued shirt, Matt takes a decidedly bolder approach with a colorful leaf-printed shirt in an autumnal motif of gold, sage, and puce-toned leaves. The shirt has a spread collar, front placket with white buttons, and unique single-button tab cuffs.

An examination of Catherine’s eyes confirms Matt’s sad suspicions regarding her condition.

The suit’s matching trousers are fashioned like the rest in Matt’s on-screen wardrobe, fitted through the hips with no pockets, slightly flared in the legs at the plain-hemmed bottoms. He wears a thick dark brown leather belt, edge-stitched in a low-contrast thread and fastened through a large gold-toned single-prong buckle.

Much as the rest of Younger’s outfit reflects menswear trends (albeit to the occasional extreme), so too do his footwear. Since the development of the “weejun” loafer by G.H. Bass in the 1930s, American men had been favoring the casual comfort of the slip-on shoe with increasing frequency, and loafers were even finding acceptance with suits in U.S. offices by mid-century. More fashion-forward Brits began adopting similar practices, and even the English author Ian Fleming had garnered such a distaste for lace-up shoes that he passed the trait on to his famous literary creation, James Bond, in his spy novels of the 1950s and ’60s.

All that to say, a sporty suit and wild shirt like this would be incongruous if worn with formal black oxfords. Instead, Matt appropriately wears a pair of dark brown leather moc-toe loafers with a silver-toned three-piece bit detail on the strap across each vamp. The full break of the trouser bottoms tend to cover his dark socks, which are likely brown to tonally coordinate with the rest of his outfit.

Matt spies the costume from Torunda that Catherine gifted to his daughter Stefanie.

How to Get the Look

Sidney Poitier and Ester Anderson in A Warm December (1973)

Men’s suits underwent an unprecedented revolution in the 1970s that embraced creative colors, patterns, and details, exemplified by this eye-catching outfit that Sidney Poitier wears for a romantic stroll in A Warm December. While the details of the outfit would be too difficult—and perhaps inadvisable—to duplicate, the spirit of

• Gold-on-stone diamond grid-patterned suit:
  • Single-breasted 3/2-roll jacket with wide notch lapels, slanted flapped breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and long double vents
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, no pockets, and slightly flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Autumnal leaf-printed shirt with spread collar, front placket, and single-button tab cuffs
• Brick silk tie
• Dark brown edge-stitched leather belt with large gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Dark brown leather moc-toe loafers with silver three-piece bit detail
• Brown socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, most accessibly available on DVD as part of a four-film “Sidney Poitier Collection” box set from Warner Brothers.

Ken Takakura as Ken Tanaka in The Yakuza (1974)

Vitals

Ken Takakura as Ken Tanaka, disciplined ex-Yakuza

Tokyo, Spring 1974

Film: The Yakuza
Release Date: December 28, 1974
Director: Sydney Pollack
Costume Designer: Dorothy Jeakins

Background

Fans of ’70s action would no doubt appreciate The Yakuza, Paul Schrader’s debut screenplay, co-written with his brother Leonard Schrader based on Leonard’s own experiences in Japan. A driving factor that compelled the brothers to finish their initial script was the stoic screen presence of Ken Takakura, who appeared in the film as the ex-akuza gangster who now teaches kendo.

Ken takes up his sword as part of his giri with Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum), formerly a U.S. Marine MP who had dated Ken’s sister while serving in Tokyo during the post-WWII occupation of Japan. Loosely defined as a lifelong debt that can never truly be repaid, the giri concept is central to The Yakuza, in which Ken describes it to Harry as “the burden hardest to bear” and refuses to rid himself of his obligation even when Dusty (Richard Jordan) suggests that the nature of his debt is relatively arbitrary.

Having arrived in Japan in search of his associate’s kidnapped daughter, Harry seeks out Ken’s assistance, but the blood they spill rescuing the young woman results in Yakuza contracts placed on both Harry and Ken, a threat that can only be eliminated by Ken killing the powerful gangster Tono (Eiji Okada) with a sword. While Harry arms himself with a .45 and a double-barreled shotgun, Ken takes a katana to appropriately exact his vengeance on the dangerous crime boss.

What’d He Wear?

Every few months, I like to check in on the appearance of a classic “Harrington jacket” in the movies, whether a genuine Baracuta as favored by Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra, or a modern evolution like the Tom Ford jacket worn by Daniel Craig in his sophomore 007 adventure Quantum of Solace.

Despite his adherence to Japan’s longstanding values and culture, Ken Tanaka enthusiastically incorporates iconic western style into his wardrobe, including lounge suits, a tweed sports coat, and even a Levi’s denim trucker jacket in addition to his traditional Japanese garments. For this climactic assault where he carries a classic katana rather than a modern firearm, Ken still dresses in a more western-informed ensemble of a Harrington jacket, black turtleneck, stone chinos, and “Beatle boots”.

Baracuta jacket zipped high and blade bloodied at the tip, Ken prepares for combat.

Ken’s navy weatherproofed cotton jacket is most assuredly an authentic Baracuta G9, based on the style, cut, and the signature Fraser tartan plaid lining seen when the jacket is partially unzipped or being cut away from his body. The jacket has a two-button standing collar with an extended throat closure tab, slanted hand pockets with a single-button flap, and raglan sleeves with ribbed-knit cuffs that match the ribbed knitting around the waist hem. The back is detailed with the classic “umbrella”-style yoke.

More than 80 years after their introduction, Baracuta still offers the G9 in a variety of colors and cloths including the navy cotton/poly blend as worn by Takakura in The Yakuza, available in both G9 Classic (via Amazon and Baracuta) and G9 Archive “Authentic” (via Baracuta) fits.

The Baracuta story dates back to 1930s England, where brothers John and Isaac Miller introduced their innovative windbreaker for golfers—the “G” in G9 refers to golf—with weather-proof styling and a fit designed to stay close to a wearer’s body while allowing a full range of arm movement, whether swinging a golf club or katana.

In addition to featuring great actors and great action, The Yakuza is filled with great turtlenecks. Consistent with his quiet, somber character, Ken Tanaka favors muted jumpers like this black turtleneck as opposed to Harry, whose rollnecks run the gamut from a timeless gray to a golden tan as was quite fashionable mid-’70s. Ken’s black turtleneck appears to be knitted in a fine cloth like merino wool.

Ken’s jacket and turtleneck get cut away from him in the heat of battle, leaving him stripped down to his trousers and boots.

Note the Fraser tartan plaid lining of Ken’s Harrington jacket being cut from his torso as he dispatches another of Tono’s men.

Ken wears light stone-colored flat front chinos with a long rise, slanted front pockets, and a button-through back left pocket, though some production stills appear to depict Ken wearing trousers with two back pockets. The straight-leg trousers are finished with plain-hemmed bottoms. He wears them with a thick dark brown leather belt with a brass-toned single-prong buckle.

Ken wears his usual black leather ankle boots with their inside-zip closure and raised heels similar to the Cuban-heeled “Beatle boots” that were popularized by the Fab Four over the previous decade, though they have a more conventional rounded toe rather than the pointed toe favored by John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Ken wears his boots with black socks.

Given what happens to his jacket and turtleneck, Ken wisely forewent wearing his wristwatch as it would have undoubtedly suffered some katana damage or hindered his own swordsmanship.

How to Get the Look

Ken Takakura as Ken Tanaka in The Yakuza (1974)

Even when not facing battle with teams of expert Japanese swordsmen, Ken’s accessible ensemble of navy Harrington jacket, black turtleneck, stone chinos, and ankle boots makes for a timeless and tasteful weekend casual look.

• Navy waterproof cotton Baracuta G9 zip-up blouson-style “Harrington jacket” with two-button standing collar, slanted hand pockets with single-button flaps, ribbed knit cuffs and hem, and red Fraser tartan plaid lining
• Black merino wool turtleneck sweater
• Stone-colored chino cloth flat front trousers with belt loops, front pockets, button-through back left pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown leather belt with large curved brass-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather inside-zip ankle boots
• Black socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

The water changes always, but the river…

Dean Martin as Matt Helm in Murderers’ Row (1966)

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Dean Martin as Matt Helm, smooth secret agent

New Mexico, Summer 1966

Film: Murderers’ Row
Release Date: December 20, 1966
Director: Henry Levin
Costume Designer: Moss Mabry

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy birthday, Dean Martin! The charismatic entertainer known for his laidback charm and boozy, breezy persona was born June 7, 1917, in Steubenville, Ohio. Having established himself as a singer and actor, first in his partnership with Jerry Lewis and then among the swingers of the Rat Pack, Dino set out on his own direction in the mid-1960s, first with his variety series The Dean Martin Show on NBC and then his starring role as easygoing counter-agent Matt Helm in a multi-film franchise based on Donald Hamilton’s espionage novels. Unlike their more straightforward and serious source material, Martin’s Matt Helm movies followed the decade’s zeitgeist for spy parodies in the spirit of Carry On Spying and Our Man Flint. If you thought James Bond was a womanizer, lounge lizard Matt Helm proves that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

While the Rat Pack image may have been sharply tailored Sy Devore suits, Dino’s characterization of Helm preferred a more casual style consistent with his easygoing characterization, invariably wearing turtlenecks or soft knitwear unless the situation called for one of Martin’s signature dark dinner suits, though even this was still dressed down with button-down shirt, of course. Martin and team quickly followed the success of The Silencers with another Helm adventure, Murderers’ Row, released within the same year. This sophomore—and occasionally sophomoric—outing introduces us to Helm in his desert bachelor pad, conducting a photo shoot with a nearly nude blonde:

Well, you’re supposed to look cold, you’re Miss January… and what a way to start the year!

What’d He Wear?

Unwittingly marked for death by Karl Malden’s evil organization, Matt Helm easily succumbs to the undressed charms of “Miss January” (Corinne Cole), who—of course— turns out to be an assassin. She lures the sleepy ex-agent into bed and, with Helm distracted in mid-coital embrace, into his own swimming pool, which she rigged to explode with a “heliobeam” device, and…you know what? Let’s just cut to the clothes.

Bemoaning his extended efforts the previous evening with Miss November and Miss December, Matt dresses solely for leisure, outfitted in a sky blue “walking suit”, a soft-knit precursor to the leisure suits that would be popularized during the following decade.

The top of Matt’s walking suit is a short-sleeved sport shirt with a ribbed collar and placket, which fastens via five light blue plastic sew-through buttons from below the collar to the edge of the straight waist hem; Matt leaves the highest button undone over his chest, providing occasional glimpses of the gold necklace he wears under his shirt. The short, set-in sleeves are banded at the ends above his elbows, and the shirt is detailed with a slim-welted set-in pocket over the left breast.

Matt’s pocketless bottoms are a hybrid between tailored trousers and pajama pants. When his untucked shirt covers the waistband, we observe the soft if straight-legged structure of these trousers, from the creased flat front down to the plain-hemmed bottoms that break clean and high over his boots. Removing his shirt for an amorous interlude with Miss January, we observe the fully elastic waistband with only a squared tab to connect the hidden hook closure suggesting any sort of adjustable fit.

I’d never considered elastic-waisted trousers particularly fashionable, but their effect on Miss January has me rethinking this theory…

Matt Helm may be dressed for comfort, but he’s still on the clock and at least appoints his feet accordingly, sporting a pair of tan napped leather low ankle boots with low, gently slanted heels. These short plain-toe boots are slipped on with the ease of elastic over the instep, stylishly concealed by the long vamps. Matt Spaiser of the estimable The Suits of James Bond identified this as a specialty style of London luxury bootmaker John Lobb Ltd. in his expert analysis of James Bond’s varied slip-on footwear. As Dean Martin was notably a John Lobb customer in real life, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they crafted this pair for the crooner. Helm wears them with black socks, a jarringly high-contrast choice of hosiery for this light-colored outfit.

This promotional lobby card for Murderers’ Row depicts Matt and Miss January in flagrante delicto just before she orchestrates his explosive assassination.

What to Imbibe

Oblivious to the potential detriment of letting his guard down in front of his murderous model, Matt Helm fixes himself a libation, pouring a drop of orange juice into a rocks glass and filling the rest with gin.

While Matt’s morning pick-me-up doesn’t exactly appeal to me, I do envy his rotating bar setup, consisting of glass tumblers filled with his favorite spirits and mixers—namely whiskey, rye, gin, and orange juice, to name a few—rotated and poured with the press of a button. Apropos our hedonist’s smooth, booze-centric lifestyle, it’s hardly a necessary or efficient alternative to keeping a few of his favorite bottles neatly arranged on a bar cart as seen in The Silencers, but to argue for efficiency is to miss the point of Helm-style hedonism altogether.

It lacks the mid-century elegance (and automation) of Matt Helm’s example, but imbibers can affect their own dash of Dino drink-slinging with rotary dispensers like this.

“Ah, there’s nothin’ like fresh orange juice,” Matt marvels.

Despite the simplicity of its name, Helm’s concoction isn’t quite the celebrated “Gin and Juice” (in fact, it’s hardly juice!), but it does hearken back to the popularity of gin-and-orange juice cocktails during the pre-Prohibition era, namely the Bronx and the Orange Blossom. As it lacks the vermouth or the simple syrup required for each of these cocktails, respectively, Helm clearly isn’t making either of these, though his straightforward combination does resemble a simple cocktail, The Abbey, that takes this to the next level.

According to Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide, the Abbey is made by shaking an ounce and a half of gin, an ounce of orange juice, and a dash of orange bitters, strained into a chilled cocktail glass and garnished with a maraschino cherry.

Dean Martin and Corinne Cole in Murderers’ Row (1966)

How to Get the Look

I had been considering one of Dean Martin’s dressier, tailored looks from the Matt Helm series for his birthday post, but the months on lockdown during the COVID-19 epidemic had me thinking about comfortable leisurewear. While Helm’s look at the start of Murderers’ Row may not appeal to most, it certainly illustrates a more stylish alternative to sweatpants and slippers.

• Sky blue soft-knit sport shirt with ribbed collar, five-button ribbed placket, set-in breast pocket, and straight hem
• Sky blue soft-knit flat front trousers with elasticized waistband (with hidden hook closure) and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Tan napped leather elastic-on-instep low ankle boots
• Black socks
• Gold necklace

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie or the whole four-film Matt Helm series.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.05: “The Runaways”)

Vitals

Jon Hamm as Don Draper, conflicted ad man

Los Angeles, Spring 1969

Series: Mad Men
Episode: “The Runaways” (Episode 7.05)
Air Date: May 11, 2014
Director: Christopher Manley
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Despite being one of the most popular shows in the streaming service’s stable of non-original content, today marks the last day that Mad Men is available to Netflix subscribers in the U.S. The first part of Mad Men‘s seventh and final season spends time with displaced ad man Don Draper as he travels from coast to coast by plane, juggling his professional aspirations in New York with his slowly stagnating marriage in L.A.

The geographic reversal is interesting, not only in the context of Mad Men but also in the east vs. west trope espoused by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry David Thoreau, as we’re used to seeing Don romanticizing California even when professionally soaring through the ranks of Madison Avenue’s advertising world. Now, his position has shifted with decided roots in L.A. via second wife Megan (Jessica Paré) taking up residence in Laurel Canyon to further her acting career while, back in New York, he’s been reduced to a glorified intern at the agency he helped to start… and that’s just in the eyes of those who are comfortable working with him.

It’s telling that Don catches a late broadcast of Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1937) during a later visit to the coast, as Don’s own erstwhile Shangri-La has been crumbling as he feels increasingly alien in Megan’s world of hippies, drugs, and free love.

Drink in hand, Don watches as yet another lover shares a demonstrative moment during a drug-fueled Bohemian bacchanal. Familiar territory, but at least he has a co-observer in Amy… and an eventual escape in the unexpected form of a characteristically talkative Harry Crane.

When one of Don’s visits to L.A. coincides with a party for Megan’s friends, it’s even more telling that Don chooses the temporary sanctuary of escape with Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) of all people, finding familiarity in someone from his office, even if the once-unassuming media buyer has transformed himself into a sleazy, pompous blowhard. Solidified by booze, Harry’s sycophancy rises to a new level as he embraces his face-time with Don, revealing more than he was intended to about SC&P courting Philip Morris’ new Commander cigarette brand in a power play that will undoubtedly put Don’s fledgling attempts to restart his career on ice. Don returns to Megan’s pad, refreshed to find that all guests have departed save for one—the flirtatious Amy (Jenny Wade)—who eagerly joins both Don and Megan in bed for a late night romp that, rather than bringing the couple closer together, all but solidifies their estrangement.

Don may have been an active participant in the impromptu ménage à trois, but neither his head nor heart were in it. Instead, he was stuck in a conversation he had with Harry Crane… who would no doubt be honored to know he was on Don’s mind during such a provocative situation. With his most considerable professional rivals, Jim Cutler (Harry Hamlin) and Lou Avery (Allan Harvey), angling to bring a new cigarette account into the SC&P fold, Don needs to get back to New York to prove that, in the parlance of Waylon Jennings over the closing song, he’s still the only daddy that’ll walk the line.

What’d He Wear?

After some initially feet-dragging, Don Draper has fully embraced the power of plaid… at least for parties. Megan first forced him into a bold plaid sports coat and tie for a dinner party with the Campbells and Cosgroves during the series’ transformative fifth season, set primarily across the back half of 1966. Over the years to follow, the laconic ad man has recognized how an eye-catching dash of plaid can liven up any occasion with a closet full of plaid jackets in varying patterns and colorways, wearing them all year be the occasion a quiet New Year’s Eve celebration, catching an afternoon movie, or even a late night at the office.

In this case, it’s a Laurel Canyon party in the late spring of 1969. It’s been a tumultuous decade for Americans, shaken up by war, activism, and political assassinations, though Megan Draper’s Hollywood remains a bastion of good vibes, a mere months before even this free love-loving town would be shaken up by the gruesome Cielo Drive murders.

Did Don pack this plaid jacket for the trip or was it stashed with some select clothes he keeps at Megan’s home? Either way, it’s a tactful choice for the party as he knows the latest Mrs. Draper likes him in plaid. I believe “The Runaways” marks the only appearance of this particular cotton sport jacket, patterned in a gray-and-cream tartan plaid with a red windowpane overcheck, subtly coordinating with the red-and-white piping on his black polo.

Don fidgets in discomfort as Megan gyrates with a denim-clad merrymaker.

Aside from its loud plaid pattern and cotton (or cotton-blend) construction, Don’s single-breasted sports coat is cut and styled similarly to the jackets of his business suits and follows the same slightly shorter length contemporary to men’s fashion trends of the late ’60s, accentuated by a rounded front skirt opening. The two buttons are placed a few inches higher than Jon Hamm’s natural waist line, similar to several of Don’s jackets across the series’ latter seasons though it’s less jarring on this casual sport jacket that Don doesn’t wear buttoned over a white shirt and tie.

The notch lapels moderately bridge the narrower lapels popular earlier in the ’60s with the exaggerated widths of the decade to follow, detailed with the subtle and appropriately sporty detail of gently “swelled” edges. The structured shoulders are gently roped at the sleeveheads, and each sleeve is finished with three buttons at the cuff. The single-vented jacket has a welted breast pocket and flapped hip pockets that slant gently toward center when compared to the horizontal axis of Don’s plaid.

“I’m tired.”

Don wisely balances the extravagantly patterned sports coat with more subdued underpinnings in all black. He tucks his black piped-collar polo shirt into his black flat front trousers, held up with a black leather belt that fastens through a steel box-style buckle with rounded edges. The belt leather coordinates with his black derby shoes.

Don prepares himself the first of many libations to sustain himself through a night with Megan’s free-loving friends (feat. Harry Crane).

Don’s black knit polo follows the Ban-Lon trend the originated when Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company developed this unique process for crimping yarn to nylon in 1954, kicking off a two-decade trend of everything from sweaters to swimsuits made from this soft-knit synthetic material. “Ban-Lon” soon became a shorthand for retro-minded knitwear whether produced by the Bancroft process or not and began enjoying a resurgence over the last decade thanks to the Mad Men influence that also re-popularized business suits, skinny ties, and classic cocktail culture.

I can’t confirm if Don’s shirt is actual Ban-Lon or a more natural fiber like merino wool, but it’s a characteristically tasteful item from the Draper wardrobe that follows fashion while still rooting in timeless style by avoiding fad-informed excess. In addition to the squared patch pocket over the breast, the shirt is detailed with edge-stitched raglan sleeves that extend to each elbow, three black plastic sew-through buttons, and a wide collar whose breadth gives visual indication that we’re approaching the ’70s. While many Ban-Lon or similar polo shirts had ribbed waist hems, Don’s is unbanded for a more relaxed fit around the waist.

The body of Don’s shirt is black with the edge of the collar and top of the breast pocket piped in narrow red and white striping for a subtle “dipped” contrast against the dark shirt, just enough to look interesting without clashing against the bold pattern of his sports coat.

As we see when Don undresses for what proves to be a surprisingly eventful night in bed, he doesn’t wear one of his usual undershirts. While the crew-neck top of a white T-shirt would add an unsightly patch above the buttoned portion of his polo, the undershirt would also serve as a protective layer between his skin oils and the material of his knit shirt, which suggests that he may indeed be wearing Ban-Lon, which was celebrated for its easily washable properties especially when compared to a more delicate fabric like merino wool.

Though he foregoes the undershirt, Don still wears his regular white cotton boxer shorts.

Without one of his undershirts, Don throws on his black piped polo shirt with his underwear when joining Megan for some much-needed morning coffee… as observed by Amy, his latest bedmate who is notable for being the first to receive not only the endorsement but the active participation of his current wife.

Through the last three seasons of Mad Men, Don wears an elegant Omega Seamaster DeVille watch with a slim stainless steel 34mm case and black cross-hair dial with a 3:00 date window on a black textured leather strap.

Don’s Omega was among four watches that appeared on the series included in a December 2015 Christie’s auction, where it sold for $11,875. According to the auction listing, “the watches were leased to the show by vintage watch specialist Derek Dier, who has supplied watches to the movie industry, noted musicians, actors, writers, artists, international dignitaries and Fortune 500 CEOs. Mad Men Property Master Ellen Freund worked with Dier to select the watches.” The Christie’s page further describes the watch as: “Signed Omega, Automatic, Seamaster, De Ville, Ref. 166.020, Movement No. 23’943’081, Circa 1960.”

What to Listen to

Before Megan’s “merry band of players” takes over the soundtrack with a take on Sidney Bechet’s “Petite Fleur” (following an ill-received few bars of “Dixie”), the party was scored by “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” by Blood, Sweat & Tears.

Though primarily associated with the Canadian-American jazz-rock fusion band, “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” was originally recorded by Brenda Holloway (no relation to Joan), who co-wrote the tune with Berry Gordy Jr., Frank Wilson, and her sister Patrice Holloway. While Holloway’s version peaked at number 39 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, the cover recorded by Blood, Sweat & Tears would shoot up to #2 by April 1969, making it indeed one of the most popular songs in America at the time of Megan’s party. Only the Fifth Dimension’s zeitgeist-defining medley “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” would prevent Blood, Sweat & Tears’ energetic track from taking the top spot.

How to Get the Look

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.05: “The Runaways”)

Don Draper has confidently developed his range of dressing from the slick ad men we met in the show’s first few seasons, having rotated a number of plaid sport jackets into his stable that are deftly and appropriately worn for soirees like this Bohemian get-together in 1969 SoCal. There’s a reason Don racked up two placements on GQ‘s rundown of the five best dressed men from this episode!

• Gray-and-cream tartan plaid (with red overcheck) cotton single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• Black Ban-Lon knitted short-sleeve polo shirt with wide red-and-white piped collar, three-button top, patch breast pocket with red-and-white piped opening, and elbow-length raglan sleeves
• Black flat front trousers with belt loops, “quarter top” side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather belt with steel rounded-edge square box-type buckle
• Black leather derby shoes
• Black socks
• White cotton boxer shorts
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series.

The Quote

I’m doin’ fine.

Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen in The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Vitals

Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen, levelheaded Mafia lawyer

Lake Tahoe, Fall 1958

Film: The Godfather Part II
Release Date: December 12, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The second Thursday in June is recognized as National Seersucker Day in the United States, an observance that began in Congress during the late 1990s to celebrate the traditional congressional summer dress in the days of the early 20th century before air conditioning reached the Capitol.

Apropos his quiet persona, Tom Hagen makes his inconspicuous return in The Godfather, Part II, seen almost in silhouette against the window as he greets the smarmy, crooked, and proudly blunt Senator Pat Geary (G.D. Spradlin) in the Don’s Lake Tahoe estate on the day of his son’s first communion. The party kicking off the film recalls the start of The Godfather as the Corleone family celebrated another family milestone with Connie’s wedding to the late traitor Carlo. At that time, Tom Hagen was Vito Corleone’s trusted consigliere, but there’s a new Don in town and Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has kept Tom relegated strictly to the role of family lawyer, privy to only a select few meetings while most others remain restricted for more privileged members of his inner circle.

What’d He Wear?

Context clues tell us that, despite the Catholic tradition of hosting this ceremony in the spring, the young Anthony Corleone’s first Communion is likely in the fall of 1958, not long before Christmas and the Battle of Santa Clara that effectively ended the Cuban revolution in favor of Fidel Castro’s movement on New Year’s Eve. Despite the cooler season, it’s all warmth at the Corleone compound in Lake Tahoe as the members of New York’s preeminent Mafia family take to the dance floor in their shining summer-friendly outfits like Fredo’s eye-catching plaid dinner jacket, Connie’s burgundy strapless dress and off-the-shoulder furs, and Michael’s dupioni silk suit.

It’s this latter outfit that’s particularly targeted by the racist tirades of the crooked Senator Geary, displeased with the Corleone family and their “kind of people… with oily hair, dressed up in those silk suits,” though his coded language excludes the fourth surviving Corleone sibling, their half-brother Tom Hagen, sitting quietly in the corner of the Don’s office in his two-piece seersucker suit.

While the silk suits may code the Corleones as gangsters to Senator Geary, Tom’s choice of seersucker is significant not only for the cool-wearing fabric appealing to his practical sensibilities but also its association with his chosen profession as it was Southern lawyers like the fictional Atticus Finch who popularized seersucker suits after they were established by New Orleans haberdasher Joseph Haspel in 1909 and spread across the country in the half-century to follow. The thin cotton fabric had reportedly originated as a silk first used in British India, its word derived from the Hindi sirśakar (Persian shir-o-shakar, meaning “milk and sugar”) according to Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man.

More than a hundred years after Joseph Sr. recognized what the Haspel website calls “the power of the pucker” for men’s businesswear, the brand has been re-launched by his great-granddaughter Laurie Haspel, offering a range of quality menswear from suit separates and silk ties to swimwear and sunglasses and, of course, the original seersucker suit. Haspel’s modern seersucker construction is a blend of 99% cotton with 1% elastane, offered in “Audubon” classic fit and the tapered “Toulouse” modern fit and an array of regional colors like blue bayou, fountainbleu, cayenne red, mardi green, oyster gray, and beignet tan.

The seersucker-clad Tom adds silent strength from the corner of Michael’s office during his meeting with Senator Geary.

Tom’s seersucker suit is made from the classic blue-and-white “hickory” or “railroad”-striped cotton with dark blue plastic sew-through buttons closing through dark blue-threaded buttonholes that contrast against the light-colored suiting.

Tom’s single-breasted jacket could be described as a “3/2.5-roll” as the notch lapels gently roll over the top button without fully obscuring it like the traditional 3/2-roll. The jacket has a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, a single vent, and two non-functioning buttons at the end of each sleeve.

Tom exits yet another meeting, this time with the slick “Sicilian messenger” Johnny Ola (Dominic Chianese).

The only Corleone insider to have completed a college education, it serves to reason that Tom Hagen would continue to embrace timeless Ivy styles even after being fully immersed in his criminal career. Freshly returned from World War II, Michael Corleone was still an Ivy dresser at the outset of The Godfather, but his rising role in La Cosa Nostra replaced the corduroy jackets and button-down shirts in his closet with slubbed silks and dramatic point collars.

Tom appropriately appoints his seersucker suit, an Ivy staple, with a light blue oxford cloth button-down (OCBD) shirt and a dark navy woolen tie that provides a textural complement to the puckered seersucker. (Audiences may have found the look familiar, as it was also favored by Darren McGavin during the contemporary TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker.)

The Corleone matriarch (Francesca De Sapio) may be displeased by most of her children’s choices in romantic partners, but both she and Michael benefit from having Tom Hagen as a steady right-hand man.

Tom’s flat front suit trousers have side pockets and are finished on the bottoms with turn-ups (cuffs). They are held up with a black leather belt that coordinates with his professional but perhaps unseasonal choice of black leather derby shoes, worn with black socks that provide a significant contrast against the light suit.

While Michael Corleone’s gray suede tassel loafers may be too uncharacteristic for Tom, this could have been an occasion for a lighter-colored pair of shoes (or at least socks!)

Michael’s meetings extend into the evening, with loyal allies like Rocco Lampone, Willi Cicci, and Tom Hagen around the room as Frankie Pentangeli rants about the Rosato brothers.

Tom appears to be wearing no wristwatch or any jewelry aside from a plain gold wedding band on the ring finger of his left hand.

How to Get the Look

Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen in The Godfather, Part II (1974)

The voice of reason in the violent world of the Corleone family, Tom Hagen dresses as sensibly as he preaches, sitting through a tense day of celebration, confrontation, and champagne cocktails in that most classic of warm-weather menswear: the seersucker suit.

• Blue-and-white “railroad stripe” seersucker cotton suit:
  • Single-breasted 3/2.5-roll jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, non-functioning 2-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Light blue oxford-cloth cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, and rounded button cuffs
• Dark navy woolen tie
• Black leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Black leather derby shoes
• Black socks

I tend to find black shoes and socks too somber and unseasonal to accompany the cool-wearing seersucker suit, so I would likely swap out of some of Tom’s choices for a brown leather belt, tan bucks, and light blue socks to more harmoniously continue the

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Vitals

Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, washed-up TV actor

Los Angeles, February 1969

Film: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Release Date: July 26, 2019
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Costume Designer: Arianne Phillips

Background

Years after his glory days on the Western serial Bounty Law, proto-cowboy actor Rick Dalton fears that he’s “a has-been” as he’s relegated to dwindling, often villainous roles in Westerns and crime shows. Each one presents the opportunity to either impress audiences or remind them that he isn’t the star that he once was, so it’s with considerable apprehension—and a killer hangover—that he’s driven to the set of Lancer to film his walk-on role as the sinister Caleb DeCoteau opposite James Stacy (Timothy Olyphant).

“You’re Rick fuckin’ Dalton… and don’t you forget it,” encourages his stunt double and best friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), calling out from the cockpit of Rick’s Cadillac as the actor makes his wheezing walk onto the set. Rick is met by the gregarious Sam Wanamaker (Nicholas Hammond), the Chicago-born actor and director who had indeed directed the Lancer pilot, “The High Riders”. In yet another touch of QT’s revisionist history, this episode aired in September 1968, six months before this movie depicts it being filmed on Sunday, February 9, 1969.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood makes no secret of ensconcing its characters and revisionist history into the actual world of movie and TV production during that era, including Bruce Lee, Steve McQueen, James Stacy, and—of course—Sharon Tate. The fictional Rick Dalton was inspired by the careers and personalities of late 1960s contemporaries such as McQueen, Pete Duel, and Burt Reynolds, whose real-life friendship with his stunt double and eventual director Hal Needham would be reflected in Rick’s brotherhood with Cliff Booth.

Burt Reynolds, photographed in London in September 1972 wearing a leather jacket and turtleneck that would have had a place in Rick Dalton’s closet.

As an homage to Reynolds, the actor had actually been cast in the small part of real-life rancher George Spahn, though Reynolds’ death in September 2018 resulted in Bruce Dern taking over the role. While sharing less in common with Rick Dalton, Dern had also been a rising star in the late ’60s who was primarily seen in Westerns and crime shows before his star-making roles in the ’70s including The Cowboys (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Family Plot (1976).

What’d He Wear?

Lancer‘s costume designer Rebekka (Courtney Hoffman)—wearing a “Sock it to me” button personally chosen for her by Tarantino—is delighted about dressing Caleb DeCoteau in a fringed Custer jacket befitting Wanamaker’s “1869 meets 1969” vision, though it could be argued that Rick Dalton has already embraced this sartorial direction in his own life. Sure, it may be unfathomable to picture Wyatt Earp riding through Dodge City in an orange leather sports coat, but details like the pointed yokes and decorative embroidery on Rick’s jacket as well as his oversized belt buckle and raised-heel boots point to a Western influence informed by his chosen vocation starring in TV Westerns.

Cut and styled like a traditional lounge jacket, Rick’s orange leather coat has full-bellied notch lapels that roll to well above the two mixed brown urea four-hole sew-through buttons on the front, echoed by the three decorative buttons on the cuff of each sleeve. The jacket has wide shoulders, roped at the sleeveheads.

The only external pockets are two large patch pockets on the hips, each detailed with a Western-style pointed and embroidered yoke that echoes the coordinating pointed yokes on the shoulders, also embroidered in the Western tradition. The back of the jacket is similarly detailed with a double-pointed yoke across the shoulders, which—as on the front—has long vertical seams running the length of the coat from yoke point to hem. The single vent neatly bisects these two seams, set apart by a short horizontal seam that runs between the two vertical seams just above the top of the vent.

Emboldened by his pal Cliff’s words of encouragement, Rick fuckin’ Dalton begins his day on set.

Rick’s trousers are a rich, dark chocolate brown likely made of polyester or a polyester blend consistent with the emerging menswear trends that would more fully take hold during the following decade. These flat front trousers have belt loops where he wears his usual dark brown leather belt, finished with a gold-toned single-prong buckle with a silver extended piece decorated with a gold “R” monogram.

The trousers are just slightly flared at the plain-hemmed bottoms to accommodate Rick’s chosen footwear, a pair of dark brown leather cowboy boots complete with slanted heels and the classic Western “bug and wrinkle” medallion stitching over the pointed toes.

If graphic tees, blue jeans, and moccasin boots are Cliff Booth’s style staples, Rick Dalton could be crowned king of the turtlenecks for his winning back-to-back jumpers worn under leather jackets for the first two days in the film’s narrative. Both colors, the previously seen rust brown and this mustard yellow, are specific to the emergent style of the following decade (though the brown jumper is a mock-neck rather than a full roll-neck.)

Tarantino had cited Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) as one of the contemporary works that inspired Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In Paul Mazurky’s 1969 sex comedy, we see both Robert Culp and Elliott Gould—as the titular Bob and Ted, respectively—wearing turtlenecks colored on the mustard spectrum, among other colors, though Culp’s and Gould’s jumpers are more of a brown mustard while Rick Dalton’s bolder knitwear evokes French’s yellow mustard. Likely constructed from merino wool, Rick’s sweater has raglan sleeves with a ribbed-knit roll-neck, cuffs, and hem.

Yellow is evidently the color for Team Rick Dalton on the film’s version of February 9, 1969. Between Cliff Booth in his yellow Aloha shirt and Sam Wanamaker in his yellow cardigan, these major players all wearing the same color as our down-and-out actor will all play a major role in his career revival, beginning with this Lancer pilot episode.

Costume designer Arianne Phillips detailed the background of Rick’s gold jewelry, specifically his double-sided pendant and the chunky ring on his right pinky, in a July 2019 interview with Fawnia Soo Hoo for Fashionista:

That gold pendant was custom-made for our film by a wonderful jewelry designer Stuart England. Stuart makes these wonderful medallions and pendants. I wanted to use his work for a long time in films. I almost did in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I just felt like Rick should have some kind of masculine jewelry and Steve McQueen was famously photographed with a medallion and I always loved that. I always thought it was sexy. So I thought Rick needed one, and Leo and Quentin responded to it. It actually is monogrammed with a little “R” on it.

The lion pinky ring was a collaboration with Chris Call, our property master, Leo and Quentin. It’s just a really cool piece of jewelry that looked right on him.

Phillips also explained to Haleigh Foutch of Collider in a December 2019 interview that the reverse of Rick’s necklace was etched with a Tudor rose-inspired design.

Rick gets a call from Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) that ensures he’ll be able to afford keeping himself in gold jewelry.

As opposed to Cliff Booth’s more distinctive (and slightly anachronistic) “bullhead” Citizen watch on its unique custom bund strap by Red Monkey Designs, Rick Dalton wears a more subdued classic timepiece that has been identified by Esquire Middle East as a Chopard Classic with a 36mm 18-carat yellow gold case, mechanical manual-winding movement, and brown alligator leather strap that closes on a gold-covered steel buckle. The watch has a round white dial with gilded hour markers with Roman numerals at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions. (See more of the Chopard Classic collection here.)

Of relative interest to some may be a visual comparison with a similar watch from the era owned by Burt Reynolds, a gold-toned 1960s Timex Electric with a plain white dial on a black leather strap that was auctioned in June 2019 alongside a 1980s quartz Seiko watch.

Rick also wears a pair of light brown plastic-framed sunglasses with pink-tinted lenses, though our hungover hero is hardly seeing the world through rose-colored glasses as he gloomily stumbles out of his Cadillac and toward his fateful day shooting his life-changing Lancer pilot.

What to Imbibe

Tarantino-world is famous for its pantries of fictional products, from the Wolf’s Tooth dog food that Cliff Booth’s pit bull downs voraciously to the Red Apple cigarettes enjoyed by all from Winston Wolf, Mia Wallace, and Butch Coolidge to Esteban Vihaio, John “the Hangman” Ruth, and Cliff himself. (Despite endorsing Red Apples in the commercials that accompany the closing credits, Rick himself seems to enjoy the equally fictional “Capitol W” brand also preferred by Butterfly in Death Proof.)

On the other hand, QT tends to give his characters real-world booze such as Stuntman Mike’s Four Roses or the Rémy Martin that Joe Cabot offers to a recently paroled Vic “Mr. White” Vega in Reservoir Dogs. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood breaks this pattern with the triumphant introduction of Old Chattanooga beer, evidently QT’s Southern-fried spin on contemporary budget brews like Old Milwaukee or Old Style.

The image that launched a thousand memes.

Period-aesthetic advertising developed by Columbia Tristar Marketing in conjunction with the film’s release establishes this “Tennessee lager” to pack a punch at 7.4% ABV, considerably higher than what would have been filling most drinkers’ beer mugs at the time.

How to Get the Look

Leonardo DiCaprio on set and in costume as Rick Dalton in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

With more than a dash of his own Western flair, Rick Dalton’s wardrobe embodies the increasingly fashionable autumn color palette of the following decade, a phenomenon comprehensively explored by The Artful Codger on Reddit.

• Orange leather single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, Western-style pointed and embroidered front-and-back shoulder yoking, large patch hip pockets with pointed-and-embroidered yokes, non-functioning 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• Mustard yellow merino wool raglan-sleeve turtleneck sweater
• Chocolate brown polyester flat front trousers with belt loops and slightly flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown leather belt with oversized gold single-prong fitting and silver “R”-monogrammed extension
• Dark brown leather cowboy boots with decorative-stitched shafts and “bug and wrinkle”-stitched pointed toes
• Gold “R”-monogrammed/Tudor rose pendant on thin gold necklace
• Gold chunky lion-motif pinky ring
• Chopard Classic 18-carat yellow gold wristwatch with round white dial on brown textured leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Johnny Depp in costume as Paul Kemp on the set of The Rum Diary (2009)

Vitals

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp, expatriate American journalist

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Summer 1960

Film: The Rum Diary
Release Date: October 28, 2011
Director: Bruce Robinson
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood

Background

The end of this week means the start of summer, arguably the strangest summer I’ll have experienced in my thirty years. The global coronavirus pandemic has seen the cancellation of sunny getaways, a halt in peanut or crackerjack sales at old ballgames, and consumers foregoing bathing suit deals in favor of fashionable face masks (like these Magnum, P.I.-inspired masks made by my friends at Aloha Funwear!)

In the spirit of what promises to be a surreal summer, I’m exploring a functional look extracted from the chaos of The Rum Diary, adapted from Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-roman à clef inspired by his brief career with the Puerto Rican sporting magazine El Sportivo. More than a decade after he portrayed HST surrogate Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Johnny Depp returned to star in this somewhat less successful adaptation of a chapter from his late friend’s life.

Depp, who celebrated his 57th birthday last Tuesday, plays Paul Kemp who⁠—like Thompson himself—arrives in San Juan at the dawn of the 1960s to take on a doomed job at a doomed newspaper, staffed by a gaggle of misfits ranging from disgruntled photographed Bob Sala (Michael Rispoli) to the psychopathic reporter Moburg (Giovanni Ribisi).

Among the misadventures in The Rum Diary is the episode featured in this post where Kemp accompanies Sala on an errand to recover the photographer’s abandoned Fiat, which has been looted and stripped for parts. Despite the damage, the Fiat retains an operable engine which allows Kemp and Sala to return to town in it… though their awkward drive is made all the more awkward when they find themselves astride the policemen they had offended⁠—er, lit on fire⁠—the previous evening, forcing them to push the abused Fiat’s 499cc engine to its 17 horsepower limit as they make their getaway.

What’d He Wear?

This is an intentionally poor execution of what could be an inspired summer look, and I found it more worthy of BAMF Style inclusion for its concept than its somewhat more ragged and baggy screen execution. Far from indicating any issues with her work, I think this speaks volumes to the talent of costume designer Colleen Atwood, expertly using Paul Kemp’s clothing to communicate how much the character is growing increasingly out of his depth (Depp-th?) as the surrounding chaos consumes him.

Kemp is at his most dressed-down for the trip to retrieve Sala’s Fiat, clad in wrinkled off-white trucker jacket, striped long-sleeve T-shirt, and rumpled dark blue linen suit trousers that—with his messy hair and bruises—makes Kemp look considerably unkempt.

The wild-eyed Kemp is hardly on the same laidback level as the beer-cracking Sala.

Johnny Depp on the set of The Rum Diary.

The off-white corduroy trucker jacket has a white brand tag on the left pocket flap that Levi’s reserved for its corded jackets and jeans at the time, per this comprehensive Beyond Retro guide. The cut and style of Kemp’s trucker jacket is consistent with the Levi’s 557XX or “Type III” introduced in 1967, several years after the setting of The Rum Diary, and I believe that non-denim fabrics like white denim were introduced even later in the decade. (Vintage examples like this 1970s-era jacket are still available via sites like Etsy.)

For advanced reading, I suggest Mads Jakobsen’s comprehensive guide for Heddels, which details the difference between the 557 jacket that Levi’s introduced in 1962 (to replace the earlier “Type II” jacket) and the more familiar 557XX that evolved five years later as the companion piece to the Levi’s 505 jeans.

Characteristics of the Type III Levi’s trucker jacket also present on Kemp’s jacket are the six copper rivet buttons, single-button cuffs (which he leaves undone), waistband button-tabs to adjust the fit, and tapered V-shaped seams running from the horizontal yoke under the pocket flaps to the waist hem. The two chest pockets align with the horizontal yoke and each close with a single rivet button through a pointed flap, and the lack of lower hand pockets suggests that this was produced prior to the 1980s.

Under the jacket, Kemp wears a white cotton long-sleeved T-shirt with balanced gray horizontal stripes and a white crew neck.

Kemp’s dark navy linen-blend flat front trousers are likely the orphaned trousers from his suit of the same color and material, detailed with belt loops, gently slanted side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. Already generously cut, Kemp likely wears them low on his waist that creates a baggy, unflattering appearance.

Kemp and Sala inspect the destroyed—but drivable—Fiat.

Further dressing down this already casual outfit is Kemp’s choice of footwear, a pair of classic Jack Purcell sneakers that can be quickly identified by the signature black “smile” across the toe cap as well as the signature soles with the orange branded rectangle within the asymmetrical navy cutout shape, best seen in this behind-the-scenes shot of Depp on set. Canadian-born Jack Purcell was a world champion badminton player when he introduced his famous sneakers for P.F. Flyers in 1935, designed with flat soles and steel shanks embedded in the heels for optimal support on the court. After Converse’s parent company purchased the P.F. Flyers brand from B.F. Goodrich in 1972, Converse maintained the Jack Purcell brand and continues to make these sneakers today (available via Converse and Amazon.)

Depp’s screen-worn Jack Purcells have low white-bleached canvas uppers and white rubber outsoles with the white toe cap dented on the front for the curved “smile”. The sneakers have white laces through eight sets of eyelets and a pair of metal grommets on the inside of each upper for ventilation. He wears them with unfashionable white socks that remain thankfully covered by the full, baggy break of his trouser bottoms.

Among the most celebrated pieces of Paul Kemp’s style in The Rum Diary are his “jet age”-styled vintage wraparound sunglasses with a curved gold semi-frame across the front and brown-tinted bubble lenses. Known as the “Spectacular” sunglasses, these sunglasses were made first by Sol Amor in the 1950s before Renauld began manufacturing them in the ’60s.

Kemp’s jet age “Spectacular” sunglasses protect his eyes from the bright Caribbean mid-day sun… and nurse his lingering hangover from his chaotic night.

Kemp’s military-style field watch suggests the A-11 watch issued to American servicemen during World War II or its all-lumen successor, the A-17, both of which would be supported by the fact that Kemp was modeled after Hunter S. Thompson, who had just been discharged from two years of U.S. Air Force service before taking his job in San Juan. This history of the A-11 is a great read, detailing the Elgin, Bulova, and Waltham watches made for the military as well as the similar but non-officially designated watches made by Hamilton.

Kemp’s steel watch with its black dial is secured to his left wrist via tan canvas strap.

The jacket makes a brief final appearance later in the film, again in a shady situation as Kemp and Sala trade $50 to Moberg in exchange for a bike and wild drugs that they need to drop into their eyes. (The $50 comes with the added request that Kemp provide visual determination that Moberg has the clap, which Kemp confirms is indeed “a standing ovation.”)

Kemp wears a white shirt of such lightweight cotton that his skin and the outline of his white sleeveless undershirt can be clearly seen through it after getting wet in the rain. The shirt has a front placket, breast pocket, and button-down collar which Kemp neglects to fasten for a characteristically scrappy appearance.

For a touch of local authenticity, Sala drinks a can of Cerveza India. Introduced in 1938, this was the first beer brewed by Compañía Cervecera de Puerto Rico, one of the territory’s two breweries.

While a white button-down shirt could nicely dress up this otherwise casual outfit, Kemp misses the mark when dressing to go out in his drug-hazed desperation, buttoning a few of the jacket rivets over the shirt but letting the shirt’s long hem flow freely in the front and back for an appearance as unbalanced as the character himself was feeling at this point.

Were Kemp not in the state of mind he was in at this point, he may have ironed the shirt, buttoned it up, and tucked it in for an effective and functional casual look.

How to Get the Look

Johnny Depp in costume as Paul Kemp on the set of The Rum Diary (2009)

There’s nothing wrong with Paul Kemp’s choice of clothes, though steps could certainly be taken to improve his overall appearance, specifically sizing down the T-shirt and trousers, a need illustrated by this behind-the-scenes shot.

• Off-white corduroy cotton Levi’s “Type III” trucker jacket with six copper rivet buttons, two chest pockets (with single-button flap), single-button cuffs, and button-tab waist hem adjusters
• White-and-gray horizontal-striped cotton crew-neck long-sleeve T-shirt
• Dark navy linen flat front suit trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White canvas-and-rubber Jack Purcell sneakers
• White socks
• Renauld “Spectacular” gold-framed wraparound sport sunglasses with brown bubble lenses
• Military-style field watch with steel case, round black dial, and tan canvas strap

Your humble author was inspired by the elements of this look, and I purchased a muslin trucker jacket from J. Crew last summer, sporting it with striped tees and jeans for a summer road trip last year and a jaunt to Florida. While I’m hardly a style icon, I’d like to offer the below linked photos as photographic evidence of how I believe the look can be improved with better fits, even on a budget:

• Photo 1 and Photo 2 (August 2019) with blue-and-white striped J. Crew T-shirt, Old Navy boat shoes, Invicta Speedway watch, and Ray-Ban aviators
• Photo 3 (March 2020) with white-and-navy striped Banana Republic T-shirt

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. I also suggest reading Hunter S. Thompson’s original book, which took three decades to get published.

The Quote

Jesus! Your tongue is like an accusatory giblet!

Jack Lemmon as Wendell Armbruster Jr. in Avanti! (1972)

Vitals

Jack Lemmon as Wendell Armbruster, Jr., bitter Baltimore businessman

Ischia, Bay of Naples, Summer 1972

Film: Avanti!
Release Date: December 17, 1972
Director: Billy Wilder
Wardrobe Supervisor: Annalisa Nasalli-Rocca

Background

“I guess there is something to what it says in the tourist guide… it says Italy is not a country, it’s an emotion,” says Pamela Piggott (Juliet Mills), laying naked on a rock surrounded by sun and sea next to an equally bare but considerably more nervous Wendell Armbruster, Jr., who exclaims in response, “Well, it’s certainly been an experience!”

Despite the context, the two aren’t yet lovers, instead brought to the romantic bay of Naples after the death of Wendell’s father and Pamela’s mother who, as they learn, had been enjoying a decade-long extramarital affair. While not among the more celebrated of Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder’s seven cinematic collaborations, Avanti! is a fitting and still entertaining work as both actor and director were maturing in their age and career. “Billy Wilder’s last great comic romance is an Italian vacation soaked in music, food, scenery and sunshine,” wrote Glenn Erickson in his excellent review for Trailers from Hell. “It’s the best movie ever about Love and Funerals.”

The curmudgeonly Wendell Jr. is understandably displeased by the discovery behind his father’s annual summer trip to Ischia, but he and Pamela agree to a “salute” to their parents’ illicit relationship with a dinner for two on the Grand Hotel Excelsior balcony, though the date is merely a ruse for the straitlaced Wendell to determine if the free-spirited Pamela is responsible for his not being able to recover his father’s corpse to return home for services in Baltimore. Their dinner interrupted by the opportunistic young Armando Trotta (Franco Angrisano) who brings Wendell back to his unfortunate-looking family’s homestead, where they’ve been holding for ransom the bodies of Mr. Armbruster and Mrs. Piggott, who died in a car crash that ruined their vineyard, thus revealing to Wendell that he has no need to further suspect Pamela.

Resolving his business with the Trottas, Wendell is going on 40 hours without sleep when he returns to the hotel and realizes that not only has Pamela not gone to bed, but she’s in a champagne-fueled haze and singing for the band. It’s hardly out of character for Pamela, whom the impatient Wendell recently had to apologize to after referring to her as “fat ass”. (Indeed, Juliet Mills reportedly gained 25 pounds in six weeks to look the part of Miss Piggott, a job requirement she was all too happy to fulfill with the help of rich Italian cuisine and nightly ice cream as she explained to Sean Mulvihill of Fanboy Nation in advance of the film’s 45th anniversary.)

Little did Wendell know when he made his tactless remark that he would soon have firsthand exposure to Pamela’s derriere when she impulsively convinces him to join her as they skinny-dip in the bay as their parents used to do. His protestations (“Miss Piggott, please keep in mind that it’s Sunday and this is a Catholic country, and they may think it’s in very poor taste!”) fall on deaf ears, and he soon finds himself swimming out of his shorts as he joins her out on their respective parents’ favorite rock, “basking like two baby seals” in their natural state.

What’d He Wear?

“Mr. Armbruster Junior! Of course, you must be… same face, same suit!” greets a waiter at the hotel restaurant. Wendell’s “suit” is his father’s double-breasted blazer with neutral-toned turtleneck and trousers, an appropriate choice for the evening as Pamela selects one of her mother’s dresses for their dinner.

Pamela apologizes for her lateness by explaining that she had to wear her mother’s dress, to which Wendell responds, “Well, that’s only fair. Actually, this is my father’s suit,” indicating his blazer and slacks

Despite being a 67-year-old grandfather “with a bad back yet!”, Armbruster Sr. maintained a fashionably contemporary wardrobe of “plaids, bell-bottoms, two-tone shoes,” as his son notes when poring over the wardrobe kept maintained by the obsequious bellhop Bruno (Gianfranco Barra). “He had one conservative suit, but he’s wearing it now… he was a real sport,” responds Bruno.

From the old man’s closet, Wendell Jr. avoids the plaids and two-toned shoes in favor of a more timeless double-breasted blazer though, in true Wendell Sr. fashion, the details and cut are quite trendy for the early ’70s. The navy blue cloth appears to be wool serge, a traditional choice for blazers, suits, and military uniforms, providing a classic foundation to balance some of the blazer’s nontraditional details.

Wendell’s blazer is rigged with a double-breasted front with six gold-toned metal buttons, two to buttons; as these are sew-through buttons rather than the shank buttons of a traditional blazer, the navy thread attaching each button is visible. Apropos the double-breasted front, the blazer has peak lapels, fashionably wide and full-bellied with slanted gorges, swelled edges, and a buttonhole on each. The sleeveheads are heavily roped with three buttons on each cuff, matching those on the front, with fashionably long double vents. The large patch pockets on the hips dress the blazer down to a level appropriately sporty for Wendell Sr.’s Tyrrhenian resort wear. Wendell Jr. appoints the blazer’s welted breast pocket with a splash of color, a puff of navy-and-red geometric silk that so perfectly matches the jacket’s inside lining that it suggests Wendell merely pulled up the lining to effect the appearance of a pocket square.

Wendell wears a beige turtleneck sweater in a luxurious, shiny fine-gauge knit that suggests a blend of silk and merino wool. The jumper has set-in sleeves and is worn untucked, though the lighter weight means it could have been effectively tucked in as well.

Wendell foregoes his father’s infamous two-toned shoes in favor of a pair of black patent leather split-toe loafers with gold horsebit-like detailing, though the gold hardware is more substantial than the classic Gucci horsebit with a braided effect across each vamp. The closest equivalent that I’ve encountered is the Burberry Solway “chain strap” loafer (available via Lyst, as of June 2020.)

Shoes and blazer in hand, Wendell Jr. allows his guard to fall with Pamela at the expense of one of the libidinous baron’s nurses.

Wendell’s tan flat front trousers are only a shade darker than the turtleneck, providing a neutral under-palette for his fashionable blazer to stand out against. Not surprisingly, the trousers are also styled consistent with the most fashionable trends of the early ’70s, from the frogmouth front pockets to the flared bottoms, finished with substantial turn-ups (cuffs). Unseen until he disrobes for his leap into the bay is Wendell’s dark brown leather belt with its round gold-toned single-prong buckle. The brown belt is suitable for the outfit itself though incongruous with his choice of black leather shoes.

Wendell strips down to only his white cotton boxer shorts and his black socks when he dives into the bay after Pamela, though—to his own embarrassment—he accidentally swims out of his shorts, which are swiftly recovered and laundered by the deviously opportunistic Bruno, who uses the incident (and his Polaroids of it) in an attempt to blackmail Wendell.

“There is just one thing that puzzled me,” asks hotel manager Carlo Carlucci (Clive Revill) upon seeing Bruno’s photos. “The black socks… is it because you are in mourning?” Indeed, Wendell’s knee-high black dress socks are all he has left by the time he reaches Pamela at the rock, and he even sacrifices those for the sake of Pamela’s modesty (NSFW!) when their “basking like baby seals” attracts the attention of some local fishermen.

Wendell goes the lengths to prove that he’s a groovy, tuned-in cat.

Wendell wears a gold tank watch with a white square dial on a black leather strap, a considerably more tasteful timepiece than the Spiro Agnew watch that his father had gifted Bruno the previous year… wait, what?

In the early 1970s, Orange County physician Hale E. Dougherty marketed a series of Swiss novelty watches via the Dirty Tine Company, featuring the likeness of then-President Richard Nixon’s famously corrupt vice president in reference to the contemporary joke: “Did you know Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch?” While Agnew was initially receptive to the watches, he quickly grew frustrated and resentful of the watches that he felt were lampooning him (as well as their enthusiastic reception among political rivals) and tried to sue Dr. Dougherty. You can read more about these watches in this Just Collecting feature and in Dr. Dougherty’s Los Angeles Times obit.

Luckily for Wendell, he had evidently thought to remove his watch—which appears to be devoid of any executive branch likeness—by the time he’s diving after Pamela into the water, perhaps having pocketed it to keep it hidden from the unscrupulous Trotta clan during his nocturnal negotiations at their vineyard.

“This place must take years off your life,” observes Wendell after watching a 90-year-old baron dance with two young nurses on the restaurant patio.

On his left pinky, Wendell wears a gold signet etched with a crest that may be the proud Armbruster family’s coat of arms, though I had initially considered that it was his own initials of an interlocking “W” and “A”.

“Miss Piggott, I have nothing against sex—pre-marital, extra-marital—you name it and I’m for it,” Wendell begins in explaining his frustration with his father’s relationship with her mother. “Love… is for filing clerks, but not for the head of a conglomerate!”

What to Imbibe

“Of course, you will wait at the bar… everything has been anticipated!” greets the waiter, sounding more like a character from The Shining than from a Billy Wilder comedy, turning over the floor to the restaurant’s lackadaisical bartender: “Mr. Armbruster, here you are… a whiskey sour—on the sour side—and, for the lady, a Bacardi on the sweet side.”

“That’s what they used to have?” asks Wendell. “Always,” assures the bartender. With that affirmation, Wendell removes the orange slice from his whiskey sour, served in a champagne flute, and takes a reluctant sip. Though Pamela doesn’t usually drink, she agrees to enjoy the Bacardi to avoid “lousing up” the evening in honor of her mother Kate and the senior Wendell Armbruster… and even the bartender joins in their toast with a drink.

Bottoms up! (So to speak.)

Sitting down for dinner, the pair hopes to recreate the meals that fueled their parents’ affair, described by the waiter as “a few gnocchi, a few ravioli, some green noodles for color,” followed by the entree of duck l’orange for two… though Pamela foregoes all in favor of a single apple in the hopes of reaching her goal to lose at least two stone. “Well, you came to the right place… Michelangelo lost three stones here,” Wendell quips back in reference to the trio of kidney stones supposedly passed by the artist while at the island.

The meal is appropriately accompanied by wine: “a Biancolella 1961 with the pasta and the Corvo di Salaparuta with the entree.” Interestingly enough, the latter was the same red wine we saw Wendell enjoying on the train from Rome to Naples at the beginning of the film.

How to Get the Look

Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills in Avanti! (1972)

Wendell Armbruster Jr. spends little of Avanti! wearing his own clothing, first trading his loud red cardigan, pink terry polo, and plaid golf trousers with a bespectacled plane passenger in exchange for a gray worsted suit, white button-down shirt, and navy knitted tie, then rigging himself in his late father’s hip and stylish sportswear of a fashionable dark navy double-breasted blazer with neutral-toned turtleneck and trousers. (Following that, he alternates between a plush hotel robe and silk pajamas for the remainder of the film’s action!)

• Navy wool serge double-breasted blazer with full-bellied peak lapels, 6×2 gold-toned sew-through buttons, welted breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and long double vents
• Beige fine-gauge silk-and-merino wool turtleneck
• Tan flat front trousers with tall belt loops, frogmouth front pockets, button-through back pockets, and flared bottoms with turn-ups/cuffs
• Brown leather belt with round gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Black patent leather split-toe loafers with gold braided-chain vamp hardware
• Black dress socks
• White cotton boxer shorts
• Gold signet pinky ring
• Gold tank watch with white square dial on black leather strap

Wendell may just puff up his breast pocket lining in lieu of a classic pocket hank; while the jaunty dash of color is admirable, it’s preferable to wear an actual pocket square.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I don’t want you to think I’m stuffy or uptight… I’m considered a pretty groovy cat, you know, tuned in.

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 6.20: “The Blue Comet”)

Vitals

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, New Jersey mob boss

Montclair, New Jersey, Fall 2007

Series: The Sopranos
Episodes:
– “The Ride” (Episode 6.09, dir. Alan Taylor, aired May 7, 2006)
– “Chasing It” (Episode 6.16, dir. Tim Van Patten, aired April 29, 2007)
– “The Blue Comet” (Episode 6.20, dir. Alan Taylor, aired June 3, 2007)
Creator: David Chase
Costume Designer: Juliet Polcsa

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

On the seventh anniversary of James Gandolfini’s death, I chose to celebrate the actor’s legacy with another look from the landmark HBO series The Sopranos. (Fans of the Skip’s outfits should already be following my friend @TonySopranoStyle on Instagram!)

In the series’ penultimate episode, “The Blue Comet”, Tony Soprano had no idea that this therapy session would be his last, blissfully idling his time in Dr. Jennifer Melfi’s waiting room by purloining a pepper-marinated steak recipe from Departures magazine. Unbeknownst to him, it’s one ravaged periodical too many as Dr. Melfi is already having serious concerns about having potentially spent the last seven years enabling a dangerous sociopath rather than helping him.

As their session intensifies, the typically testy Tony is caught off guard when it’s Dr. Melfi who’s quicker to resort to sarcasm and hostility, to the point where Tony himself observes, “you sound like you’re glad I’m takin’ it on the chin!” In the face of her stating her intent to cease treatment, Tony resorts to defensiveness, manipulation, and denial, tactlessly “chalkin’ this up to female… menopausal… situations,” but she stands strong. Not Tony’s insults nor his citing his son’s recent suicide attempt can change the resolute doctor’s mind.

What’d He Wear?

While tailored suits and jackets were always a prominent part of Tony Soprano’s wardrobe, his heightened power and status by the show’s final season found him increasingly dressed in stylish sport jackets and ties for many occasions ranging from his frequent therapy appointments to nights on the town with his guys. In at least three episodes across both parts of The Sopranos‘ sixth and final season, Tony wears a rich golden tan herringbone sports coat, likely woven from a wool or wool-silk blend cloth and detailed with front darts and roped sleeveheads.

This sport jacket, which Tony wears for what turns out to be his final session with Dr. Melfi, is single-breasted with notch lapels that roll to a single button, proportionally positioned to balance James Gandolfini’s large frame while also denoting Tony’s jacket as a fashionable alternative to more traditional two- or three-button garments. Like the four “kissing” buttons on each cuff, this sew-through button is dark brown with beige contrasting trim.

The size of the jacket draws greater attention to its minimalist styling like this one-button front, ventless back, and and jetted hip pockets.

Tony’s seven years of treatment with Dr. Melfi come to an abrupt end.

Tony echoes the golden tones of the jacket with his yellow satin-striped shirt, styled with point collar, plain front, and double (French) cuffs with gold textured cuff links. His dark brown woven silk tie is patterned with a series of black-outlined rectangles, arranged in “downhill”-direction collections that alternate between horizontally oriented slate-colored rectangles and vertically oriented tan rectangles, all consisting of nine misshapen squares with the center square colored black.

Tony wears black wool double reverse-pleated trousers, finished with turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms. The lack of a visible belt buckle suggests that the Skip is wearing suspenders (braces). His black calf leather split-toe derby shoes are likely the Allen Edmonds “Dickson”, which Gandolfini also wore in a lighter brown leather during The Sopranos‘ later seasons.

The Pittsburgher in me appreciates seeing Tony rigged in black and gold.

In Earlier Episodes

This sports coat made its first appearance (by my observation, at least) in “The Ride” (Episode 6.09) when Tony joins his crew for Christopher’s bachelor party at Vesuvio. For this dinner, he wears a lighter cream shirt similarly styled to his later yellow striped shirt with point collar, plain front, and double cuffs for his gold cuff links. His silk tie is patterned in a series of gold squares, with each grid cell alternating between a vertically textured box or a gold square within a square. This is the only time he wears a pocket square with this jacket, rakishly folding a cream silk kerchief in the jacket’s welted breast pocket to match his shirt. Tony’s dark brown trousers have the usual pleats and side pockets.

Reflected in the bathroom mirror, Tony offers some wisdom to Paulie in “The Ride” (6.09). Note his suspenders and newly obtained tie stain.

The jacket appears again during a brief sequence in “Chasing It” (Episode 6.16) when Tony and his core crew are out for an evening of gambling in Atlantic City. Apropos the casino setting, Tony is dressed more like the prototypical gangster with a black shirt and trousers that heavily contrast against his light jacket and tie, a silk cravat patterned with black cross-hatched stripes against a beige-and-gold ground.

Tony enjoys a night out with the guys in “Chasing It” (Episode 6.16).

Jewelry and Accessories

On National Watch Day, I would be remiss not to mention Tony’s signature luxury watch, the 18-karat yellow gold Rolex Day-Date “President” self-winding chronometer that Gandolfini had worn throughout the series since the second episode aired in 1999.

When Rolex introduced its innovative Day-Date model in 1956, it was the first mass produced watch to include both the full day of the week and the date, with the magnified date window at 3:00 and the day of the week—offered in 26 languages—cycling through at the top of the dial. The Day-Date was introduced alongside a new three-piece link bracelet that, after it was adopted by LBJ the following decade, would be forever known as the “President” or “Presidential” bracelet. BAMF Style reader Chris identified Tony’s 36mm Day-Date as a ref. 18238 (rather than the misidentified ref. 118238) by its heavier bracelet and polished lugs.

Tony flashes wrists full of jewelry during his final session with Dr. Melfi.

On his right wrist, Tony wears his 18-karat gold link bracelet with a custom fancy curb link that @TonySopranoStyle describes as “if a Cuban curbed link chain and an Italian Figaro link chain with a twist had a baby,” fastened with a safety clasp that provides more continuity than a “lobster”-style clasp. His rings include his usual gold ruby-and-diamond bypass ring on his right pinky and plain gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand.

The Casino Connection

Interestingly—at least in my opinion—Tony’s outfit in “The Blue Comet” recalls one of the many costume changes worn by Robert De Niro as hotshot casino chief “Ace” Rothstein in Casino (1995), specifically when Ace is denied his gaming license by the Nevada Gaming Commission. Both are moments marking the ignominiously abrupt close to years of work that could have promised relative salvation (legal salvation for Ace and emotional salvation for Tony) ultimately denied to each gangster.

In Casino, Ace makes a stand against the Nevada Gaming Commission that would be just as futile as Tony’s protests to Dr. Melfi ending their treatment.

You can read more about Ace’s tan blazer, long-collared Anto shirt, and matching brown silk tie and pocket square in this 2016 BAMF Style post.

What to Cook

The steak recipe that Tony can’t resist in Departures, which kicks off the process that results in Dr. Melfi discontinuing her sessions with him, is for ribeye steak marinated with Espelette, described as a “fiery Basque papper [that] puts any grilled steak into orbit.” With a description like that, how could he pass it up?

Was it worth it, Tony?

Columbus returned from the new world with chile [sic] peppers as curiosities. The pungent pods were soon discovered as a cheap substitute for black pepper (so expensive at the time it was used as currency in some countries). Varieties spread quickly throughout the Mediterranean and North Africa but only the tiny village of Espelette had the beloved Piment d’Espelette.

While I haven’t been able to source the exact recipe that caught Tony’s attention with the above introduction, recipes for Espelette marinade abound online, including this one from Baltimore-area spice giant McCormick that calls for two tablespoons of Espelette pepper powder, two teaspoons of Italian seasoning (which is undoubtedly abundant in the Soprano household), a teaspoon of onion powder, and half a teaspoon of Sicilian sea salt.

How to Get the Look

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 6.20: “The Blue Comet”)

While the Jersey mobsters of The Sopranos may not be arbiters of sartorial gold standards in their velour tracksuits, bold printed rayon shirts, and abundant gold jewelry, their fearless leader Tony stands out as arguably one of the most tasteful dressers of the Soprano crew in his array of suits and sport jackets with coordinated shirts and ties.

• Golden tan herringbone silk single-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Light yellow satin-striped shirt with point collar, plain front, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold textured cuff links
• Dark brown woven silk tie with black-outlined rectangle motif
• Black wool double reverse-pleated trousers with turn-ups/cuffs
• Dark suspenders with brown leather hooks
• Black leather split-toe derby shoes
• Black socks
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
• Rolex Day-Date “President” 18238 chronometer watch in 18-karat yellow gold with champagne-colored dial and “President” link bracelet
• Gold curb-chain link bracelet
• Gold pinky ring with bypassing ruby and diamond stones
• Gold wedding ring
• Gold open-link chain necklace with round St. Jerome pendant

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series and its excellent literary companion The Sopranos Sessions by TV critics and die-hard fans Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz.

The Quote

Well, you don’t need a gynecologist to know which way the wind blows.

Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii (1961)

Vitals

Elvis Presley as Chadwick “Chad” Gates, young tour guide and U.S. Army veteran

Honolulu, Hawaii, Summer 1961

Film: Blue Hawaii
Release Date: November 22, 1961
Director: Norman Taurog
Costume Designer: Edith Head

Background

Summer kicks off this weekend in the Northern Hemisphere with beaches and warm destinations slowly reopening around the world after months of lockdown during the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic. Whatever your summer plans include, I hope all BAMF Style readers enjoy a safe, healthy, and happy season whether enjoying time at home or safely traveling.

Travel or no travel, this is also the season for summer shirts and summer movies. The tenth top-grossing movie of 1961, Blue Hawaii was the first of three movies that Elvis filmed in the “paradise of the Pacific” and remains one of his most popular for its tropical style and memorable soundtrack, which includes dusted-off classics like the title track “Blue Hawaii” (originally written for Bing Crosby in 1937), “Hawaiian Wedding Song” as well as introducing “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, which would become a new standard for the King.

Elvis performs the song on screen when his character, recently returned Army veteran Chad Gates, serenades his girlfriend’s grandmother on her 78th birthday, curiously seeming to reveal his latent affection for the older woman rather than his actual girlfriend Maile (Joan Blackman).

What’d He Wear?

“Sure feels good to get back into civvies, mom,” Chad tells his mother (Angela Lansbury) after he finally changes out of his wet Army uniform into a brown tropical-print shirt and off-white slacks. The print is a classic tapa design, which my friend Aloha Spotter describes in his definitive guide to Aloha shirts as “typified by rough, abstract geometric patterns with a Polynesian, tiki, or tribal quality to them.”

As this design was particularly popular during the 1950s and frequently printed in brown colorways, Chad’s brown shirt with its tan and white tapa print neatly represents a prevailing trend in the era’s tropical attire. The short-sleeved shirt has a more structured spread collar with a loop rather than the familiar flat camp collar with dark brown buttons up the plain front and a straight hem, meant to be worn untucked. Though it’s difficult to discern against the shirt’s delightfully chaotic pattern, there appears to be a non-matching breast pocket.

(For a comprehensive breakdown of all of the King’s shirts in Blue Hawaii, check out this fantastic post from Aloha Spotter!)

Despite playing his mother on screen, Angela Lansbury was only 36 years old when Blue Hawaii was released… and barely more than nine years older than Elvis!

Chad changes into cream lightweight trousers, a smart and seasonally appropriate choice. The way the trousers shine under certain light suggests silk or comfortably cool-wearing mohair in the trouser construction, likely the same trousers he wears with his red tapa shirt later in the movie. The straight-leg trousers have plain-hemmed bottoms which break high over his shoes, a pair of sand-colored suede casuals best seen as he leaps out of his red MG after arriving at the party for Maile’s grandmother.

Chad wears a diamond-studded gold ring on his left pinky, likely a piece of Elvis’ own jewelry as it would be considerably out of character for a modest young aspiring singer recently out of the Army.

Another piece that’s undoubtedly from the King’s own collection is his futuristic Hamilton Ventura wristwatch, instantly recognizable for its dramatically asymmetrical triangular case. This Space Age-inspired timepiece was designed by Richard Arbib and rolled out in 1957 as part of Hamilton’s innovative line of electric watches. Elvis’ screen-worn watch has a black triangular dial that follows the shape of the 31mm stainless case, strapped to his left wrist on a black leather strap.

Elvis’ distinctive Hamilton Ventura gets a well-deserved (but all too brief) close-up when Chad presents Maile’s grandmother with a music box for her birthday.

More than 60 years after its introduction at the height of the Atomic Era, Hamilton has once again added the Ventura to its lineup, reintroducing this iconic design with the quartz-powered ref. H24411732 available from Hamilton or Amazon as of June 2020.

After arguing with his parents about his future and his unwillingness to work for his father at the Southern Hawaiian Fruit Company, Chad speeds over to Maile’s family homestead for her grandmother’s birthday party, where Maile greets him with that most festive of Hawaiian finery, a floral lei.

Maile’s grandmother seems quite taken by Chad, and he returns the favor by placing his lei on her after singing about how he can’t help falling in love with her. (And yes, I’m still talking about her grandmother.)

What to Imbibe

Although Chad drinks straight pineapple juice when drinking with his parents, the Mai Tai is an unofficial star of Blue Hawaii, enjoying by most of the main characters including Chad’s parents Fred (Roland Winters) and Sarah Lee (Angela Lansbury).

The most accepted history of the Mai Tai cites its origins in the expert hands of Victor J. Bergeron at his flagship Trader Vic’s restaurant in Oakland, California, though some have claimed that Vic was at least inspired by Don the Beachcomber’s similar Q.B. Cooler developed a decade earlier. Wherever the Mai Tai’s story truly began, it emerged as a favorite during the postwar Tiki culture boom that lasted well into the ’60s, thanks in part to the popularity of Blue Hawaii.

Using Trader Vic’s 1944 recipe as a basis, a typical Mai Tai includes rum (3 cl of amber Jamaican rum and 3 cl of Martinique molasses rum, according to IBA specifications), fresh lime juice, orgeat syrup, and orange liqueur like orange curaçao. The IBA specifications also add a small portion of rock candy syrup, while other recipes incorporate additional liqueurs, syrups, or fruit juices for flavors.

While the imbibers of Blue Hawaii tend to garnish their Mai Tais with a pineapple wedge and maraschino cherry, the original Trader Vic formula called for a half a lime shell inside the glass and a sprig of fresh mint at the edge. Alfred Tong’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Cocktails meets these garnish suggestions halfway, suggesting a mint sprig and slice of pineapple, in addition to fixing the drink with the additions of lemon juice, pineapple juice, apricot brandy, and Angostura bitters.

Maita’i roa ae!

How to Get the Look

Elvis Presley in Blue Hawaii (1961)

Chad Gates is meant to be a kamaʻāina (Hawaiian resident) and dresses accordingly in tasteful aloha wear like this classic tapa print shirt, neatly complemented by tropical off-white trousers, summery suede shoes, and a futuristic watch that further qualifies Elvis’ style in Blue Hawaii as a significant time capsule from the aloha-meets-atomic age.

• Brown with tan-and-white tapa print short-sleeved shirt with spread loop collar, plain front, breast pocket, and straight hem
• Cream lightweight silk flat front trousers with slightly slanted side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Sand-colored suede slip-on shoes
• Cream socks
• Hamilton Ventura electric wristwatch with 31mm triangular stainless steel case, black triangular dial, and black double-ridged leather strap
• Diamond-encrusted gold pinky ring

While not an exact pattern match, you can reflect the spirit of this shirt with the faded red cotton “Hawaiian Glyphs” shirt available from Aloha FunWear, this Wave Shoppe brown tapa shirt via Amazon, or this distinctive vintage Ui Maikai shirt at The Hana Shirt Co.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and follow my friend Aloha Spotter!

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (1960)

Vitals

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley, charming American con artist and sophisticated sociopath

Italy, August 1959

Film: Purple Noon
(French title: Plein soleil)
Release Date: March 10, 1960
Director: René Clément
Costume Designer: Bella Clément

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Few movies so stylishly capture the intriguing possibilities of summer as Plein soleil, balancing a sun-drenched travelogue of beautiful coastal Italy with the provocative thrills and deception to be expected from the dangerous mind of Patricia Highsmith, whose 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley formed the basis for this lush and haunting adaptation.

Alain Delon starred as the titular Tom Ripley, the devious and dapper American grifter whose vicious act against his pretentious playboy pal Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) catalyzes an escalating series of lies and violence.

Highsmith herself praised the film as “very beautiful to the eye and interesting for the intellect,” particularly singling out Delon’s performance as Tom Ripley, though she reserved some criticism for the reimagining of the ending. Still, Purple Noon remains an absorbing thriller more than 60 years after its original release, immortalizing the evocative beauty of mid-century Italy through the skilled lens of cinematographer Henri Decaë.

Marie Laforêt and Alain Delon stroll along Via Nazario Sauro against the Gulf of Naples.

What’d He Wear?

After Tom Ripley murders Philippe (I did warn about spoilers!), he abandons most of his own clothing in favor of the luxury garb from his deceased pal’s expansive wardrobe, which—as illustrated in an earlier scene—was one of many aspects of Philippe Greenleaf’s life that Ripley had so coveted.

However, Tom wisely maintains one piece of clothing from his previous life so that he doesn’t arouse the suspicions of his and Philippe’s mutual acquaintances, particularly the beguiling Marge (Marie Laforêt), making frequent use of a light gray tailored jacket that the third act reveals to be part of a two-piece suit. Though I had originally thought this suit to be made from linen or a linen blend, a closer lock reveals that it lacks linen’s typical texture and propensity of wrinkling and the suiting is likely a light summer-weight worsted.

This suit differs from the Neapolitan-tailored gray suit that Tom liberates from Philippe’s collection and wears when he is cornered by Freddy Miles at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome.

Outfit #1 – Boating from Mongibello

After the opening sequence of Tom’s antics in Rome with Philippe, they set sail with Marge aboard the yacht named after her, headed for Taormina on the east coast of Sicily. In his guise as the respectable Ivy Leaguer, Tom still wears the blue oxford cotton shirt he wore with his cream-colored jeans, now dressed up with gray trousers and light gray summer suit jacket.

Tom’s suit is tailored with a generally flattering full cut contemporary to the film’s late 1950s production, though most garments do tend to be flattering when worn by Alain Delon. The single-breasted jacket has a full chest with drape, short double vents, and wide, padded shoulders, styled with a classic three-button front with gray mixed horn buttons that mimic the three smaller buttons on each cuff. In addition to the traditional welted breast pocket, the jacket has sporty patch pockets on the hips that dress the garment down and allow it to be more effectively orphaned as an odd jacket.

Tom and Philippe walk through Rome, with Philippe wearing a white summer suit that would later end up in the Ripley collection.

Tom’s light blue OCBD, to be detailed more extensively in a future post, has a button-down collar, front placket, and barrel cuffs with the button placed closer to the wrist rather than centered on each cuff.

Tom wears the same mid-gray trousers that receive plenty of screen time as he peruses the Neapolitan marketplace, worn here with navy-and-white espadrilles that Philippe demands he remove before boarding Marge. Appropriately worn without socks, these slip-on summer shoes retain the classic rope sole associated with the quintessential espadrille, though the unique moc-toe uppers are navy blue canvas with contrasting white vamps, detailed with navy piping across the top of each instep. The soles appear to be a jute rope or braid rather than the traditional esparto rope.

Stylish though Tom’s espadrilles may be, Philippe refuses to let him wear them aboard his yacht.

Classic navy rope-soled espadrilles are plentiful across all price ranges, but—unfortunately for the modern shopper—a pair of two-toned espadrilles like Delon’s natty footwear is harder to find, both for its colorway and loafer-like styling.

The closest pair I’ve seen is from Soludos, consisting of dark navy uppers detailed with a thick white block stripe across the vamp and sides and on the back; while lacking the exact details of Tom Ripley’s espadrilles, they at least reflect the nontraditional spirit of his shoes.

Outfit #2 – To Naples with Marge

After Philippe’s murder, Ripley returns to see Marge who takes him to Naples in a brief but glamorous sequence that produced some of the most memorable and eye-catching imagery from Plein soleil. Delon never wears the gray summer suit jacket during these scenes, instead insouciantly slinging it over his shoulder for most of the sequence… though a rare behind-the-scenes shot available for purchase from Shutterstock here shows Delon wearing the jacket during the filming of this scene.

Apropos the setting in an epicenter of Italian fashion world, Tom graduates away from more rigid American and British-informed clothing and visits Marge in a dashing white pique long-sleeved shirt, only partially buttoned to reveal much of his chest. This casual shirt has a spread collar, button cuffs that he leaves unfastened and rolled up each forearm, and rolled edges. The front buttons are widely spaced up the plain front, and Delon leaves the top two undone.

Tom wears the same gray twill flat front trousers from the earlier scene, though his keeping the jacket off reveals more detail, particularly the four flapped pockets. The two back pockets are each covered with a gently pointed flap, and the slanted front pockets are also detailed with flaps, though these are narrow pointed strips that fasten to a black button in front of each pocket, leaving the pocket open behind it. Tom wears a black leather belt with a squared steel single-prong buckle.

Are any eagle-eyed viewers able to identify the suit’s tailor by the label seen stitched above the inside pocket?

In his ABCs of Men’s Fashion, published in 1964 four years after Plein soleil was released, Sir Hardy Amies explains that “the Italian style of dressing and above all their attitude to clothes and the wearing of them have a certain predatoriness, an air of masculine superiority softened with an almost feminine grace that intrigues women and has proved successful in the great game of sexual attraction.”

We see this Italian style at work as Tom lays on his continental confidence navigating the Neapolitan market and, eventually, Marge’s heart. Amies’ 1964 dissertation further explains that “in town shoes and particularly in those of the ‘slip-on’ variety, Italian styles are fashionable,” and we can safely assume that the black leather Venetian loafers are of Italian origin.

Delon’s attitude and style in Plein soleil would be channeled two decades later by the equally alluring (if somewhat more scrupulous) character played by an Armani-clad Richard Gere in American Gigolo.

Tom would later wear the same shirt, trousers, belt, and shoes under Philippe’s striped regatta blazer when returning to Mongibello to fake Philippe’s suicide.

Though rotating through shirts, trousers, and shoes, Ripley continues to wear his usual wristwatch. The watch has a shining stainless steel case with a round silver dial, secured to his left wrist via navy blue canvas strap.

Outfit #3 – From Rome to Mongibello

After wearing the suit jacket orphaned for its first few appearances, Ripley finally introduces us to the full two-piece suit with its matching trousers when he travels to Rome to identify Freddy Miles’ corpse, followed by lunch with Marge and Philippe’s “jet set” friends. Once he realizes that an undercover policewoman is eavesdropping on their conversation, he lets it slip that he saw Philippe and believes him to be hiding out at Mongibello… then covertly returns to Mongibello where he dons the striped boating blazer to forge Philippe’s suicide note.

Aside from the suit’s matching trousers, this outfit blends the elements present for the suit jacket’s prior appearances, recalling Ripley’s signature light blue OCBD shirt as well as the black Venetian loafers from Naples. Since he keeps the jacket buttoned, we can’t positively discern many details of the pleated suit trousers aside from their tasteful rise to the jacket’s buttoning point and the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Tom Ripley returns to Mongibello to tie off a loose end in his increasing web of lies.

How to Get the Look

With one jacket, two shirts, two pairs of trousers, and two pairs of shoes, Tom Ripley is able to rotate through three different summer-friendly looks with ease, capitalizing on each piece’s versatility which suits his own chameleon-like ability to fit into whatever identity the situation requires.

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (1960)

• Light gray semi-solid worsted wool summer-weight suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and short double vents
  • Pleated trousers with plain-hemmed bottoms
• Gray twill wool flat front trousers with medium-high rise, belt loops, button-flap slanted side pockets, pointed-flap set-in back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms (alternative to suit trousers)
• Black leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Gold pendant necklace on thin gold chain
• Steel watch with round silver dial on navy blue strap

The Shirts:

• Light blue oxford cotton long-sleeve shirt with button-down collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• White cotton pique long-sleeve casual shirt with soft spread collar, plain rolled-edge front, and 1-button rounded cuffs

The Shoes:

• Navy canvas moc-toe espadrilles with white navy-piped vamps and jute soles
• Black leather Venetian loafers